Tag Archives: Blogging

Remaining Unknown in a Viral World: Popularity, ASMR and Celebrity Status

Books, Business, Computer Games, Memoirs, News, Podcast, Politics, Relationships, Self-Publishing, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , ,

Earlier today, I was examining the statistics on my website and realized that I have about 1.5 million hits on my site since I started it. That appears to be a lot, but then I started to think to myself that not a lot of people comment on it or send me messages based off of my web site (or its blog). So, this tells me that I seem to get a lot of traffic but apparently nothing seems to be going on with it. And yes, that opens up a lot of thought on a subject I’ll probably take up at another time (what do to with traffic when it gets to your site, as I don’t seem to be doing a whole of good with that area).

Last night, I was watching the latest episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which is still one of my favorite police procedural types of shows. And in this episode, an Instagram star hooked up with a MMA fighter and was raped, but it turns out the whole thing had been set up by a young woman who was a follower of both of their Instagram feeds. The prosecutor mentioned that a motive for the set up was that the Instgram model had tens of thousands of followers, the MMA fighter had 2 million, and the young, geek girl had 6. Therefore, this was vengeance against the two well known Instagram stars from someone who felt that she had an important voice but no one was listening to her.

That resonated quite a bit with me because I think a lot of us who aren’t big stars often feel the same way. Not that we’re about to set up someone famous like the plot line of this story, but at the same time the realization that there are people who are seriously famous for a sex tape, or for just looking good in pictures, can be a hard thing to face when one is trying really hard to become known as well, but doesn’t  have that advantage those pseudo celebrities have.

Recently, I’ve been following a bunch of ASMR artists who I find to be very good at their craft. In case you’re not familiar with ASMR, it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which according to Wikipedia is “is a term used for an experience characterised by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia.” And even with that definition, you’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) at how many news agencies just don’t understand it, which you can see when they start to make statements that suggest watching President Trump gives “ASMR tingles” or when some celebrity posts a Youtube of her just staring at the screen and the media goes ga ga over her “ASMR video.”

In reality, ASMR is difficult to achieve and very few artists succeed at it. There’s a reason that there are a few very popular ASMR artists out there, and almost none of them are celebrities known for other things.

Which brings me back to my original subject, and that’s that viral popularity has a bad habit of creating an atmosphere that wasn’t intended in the first place. For those not completely familiar with ASMR, it’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking ASMR is nothing but people whispering and making sounds with inanimate objects. And that’s because a lot of it comes from doing exactly that. But it also comes from a stronger understanding of how those actions can trigger the audience into feeling something more than just simple reactions. As a result, quite a few artists sometimes push the envelope and create what I’ve started to characterize as PG-13 ASMR. What I mean by that is ASMR that is designed to arouse rather than “tingle”, and for those not initiated in what ASMR, it can be very easy to mistake one for the other.

This happens quite often because the models who do ASMR are almost always attractive. Both male and female ASMR artists are generally above average in attractiveness and in their social tools for attracting others. This should be expected because this is a video environment where an unattractive artist is going to be avoided or ignored, and an attractive one is going to cause people to click the image being presented on the Youtube reception screen. This often resonates in the comments section of their videos where the anonymous nature of the Internet can cause trolling behavior you’d expect in a darkened strip club environment. To make matters worse, a number of ASMR artists chase the elusive crown of traffic and subscriptions (people subscribe to their personal channels), which leads to a revenue stream from Youtube. This causes the perpetrators of the more adult environment to keep pushing the adult envelope and the non-sexual artists to feel the need to participate because of loss of viewer clicks.

Youtube has somewhat cracked down on this phenomenon, but has done so with broad strokes that hurts mostly the non-sexual artists because they demonetize mostly based on viewer feedback, and the business has become somewhat cutthroat with an almost mob mentality towards those who are actually trying to comply and do the right thing. As usual, those are the ones who suffer the most, whereas the ones who are crossing the line are rewarded because none of their fans are ever going to turn them in for breaking any of the rules.

Which kind of brings me full circle in what I was originally talking about, and that’s the problem of trying to achieve any level of popularity in a bread and circuses environment where controversy, sex and violence are the things that attract the largest audience. How does the unknown artist achieve notoriety in a mostly celebrity driven world? In a free market mentality, one would think that the quality rises to the top and everything else remains at the bottom. But that’s rarely the case. Quite often, celebrity status is more than enough to create buzz so that its products remain at the top and everything else is left grasping for scraps. As a writer, I find this problem emblematic in the field because some really bad celebrity fiction gets serious attention when it’s not very good and it’s written by people who have about twenty years before they’ll actually ever write anything significant (if they were to work on it full time and not just in between movies or photo shoots). But the people who put in the work in hopes of one day becoming discovered may do so their entire lives and never get a nibble beyond a table scrap thrown their way.

So, the question is: Is there a balance, or is it just not worth the effort? I’m kind of on the cusp of this myself, as I’ve been writing for most of my entire life, creating computer games that were popular but too early for the industry to ever recognize, wrote music back in the day when such music was seen as too experimental, and any number of other creative tasks that have fumbled, fizzled or just never took off. People keep saying “Just keep at it and your day will come”, but part of me wonders if it’s just a crap shoot and my time might better be spent catching up on the latest season of The Walking Dead.

The Fear of Pissing Off Your Audience While Trying to Get One in the First Place

Books, Business, Economics, Memoirs, News, Relationships, Self-Publishing, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , ,
The cover of my new book. Someone told me it looks like something they may have read, but I’m not seeing it.

One of the problems of being political or taking a political stance is that chances are pretty good that you’re going to end up pissing off someone when you didn’t intend to do just that. As a writer, my goal is always to entertain as many people as possible, so whenever I deal with political issues, I get scared that whatever I’m going to say is bound to cause an audience member to dislike me. And these days, when someone dislikes you, that person tends to stop following and you never hear from that person again.

Therefore, it becomes a dilemma.

Because if one focuses on this type of fear then a writer is bound to water down whatever he or she has to say and only say the things that he or she hopes the audience is interested in hearing. And I can only imagine how bland and boring that might turn out to be.

The other day, I posted a tongue in cheek comment about something, and one of my politically correct “friends” corrected me and told me that I had to be careful, because saying such things can be construed to be wrong. I didn’t respond, but part of me was thinking: “Hey, I said what I said because it was something I wanted to say. If it bothers you, just ignore it or go frack yourself.” I didn’t say that because I’m a complete coward, but it did cause me to think.

And then the next week, that same person posted something that was completely one-sided, told in a tone that she knew best and anyone else who disagreed was obviously stupid. Basically, she did exactly what she told me not to do and then didn’t think anything of it. I then started to notice she does that all of the time.

Some people are like that. They are good at criticizing, but not so good at avoiding the behavior they criticize in the first place.

But then, she’s not a writer worried about people not continuing to read what she writes, and I am. So, there’s the dilemma.

Which kind of brings me to wondering how it is possible for polemic people to write the types of articles they do, knowing that people are going to be annoyed at what they write. I’m thinking about people like Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, and Tomi Lahren. The first two have completely established audiences that they’re probably never going to lose, but like the latter one, it leaves me wondering what kinds of risks is someone like Lahren willing to make in order to remain somewhat relevant in a very hostile media atmosphere. And part of me is also constantly wondering if part of the appeal is physical attractiveness as well, because if there wasn’t that, I kind of wonder at how many followers someone like her would have if the audience isn’t already cemented.

Social media seems to be one of those weird animals in that some people just come to it naturally and do really well right out the gate, whereas others, like me, take to it slowly and never really seem to reach the audiences they dream of achieving. It’s like the market for writing novel e-books. I’ve been writing for decades, and the readers I have tend to be the same readers who found me some years back. Others, I’ve seen them publish their first book and suddenly they’re selling them faster than Amazon can print them. Okay, Amazon doesn’t exactly print them, but you get the idea. I hope.

Some people just do really well with little effort while others succeed without trying. I’m starting to believe that that is how social media works for some people as well. While some people have the added benefit of being attractive to, well, attract others, those of us like me, toad-like in appearance, pretty much have to fight for each stride of existence. Okay, not toad-like, but I will admit that when my picture is put next to Brad Pitt’s, people tend not to stop and think: “Wow, I can’t tell them apart.” Definitely not. Brad’s got nothing on me!

Anyway, so the point is that getting an audience can be pretty tough and then once you do, it’s like walking on egg shells to make sure that you don’t lose any of your listeners. People can be pretty fickle about such things, and once you’ve lost a member of your audience, you tend to never get that person back.

So, if this bothers anyone who happens to be reading this, understand that it was someone else who said it, not me. I would never say anything to piss you off. Really. I’m just that kind of guy.

Please don’t go!

Now that I’m on my own

A Season of Kings, Books, Memoirs, Self-Publishing, Social Networking, Tales of Reagul, Writing, , , , , , , ,
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then

The last day of work for me was on Tuesday, and it was one of those days that really didn’t have a lot going on. I came in expecting to be given grunt work to do most of the day, but the senior boss decided that I would have my exit interview at 11:30 AM, and then I was finished with the job as of noon. Still got paid for the entire day (or so they say), and then I was kind of on my own from there. I forgot to pick up some medication at the pharmacy at work because I was in such a hurry to leave, so I’ll probably have to wander back there this weekend and do the pick up of that stuff.

So, I’m now in the process of putting together my writing projects and pushing forward on those. I completed and published my novella, The Beast of Begmire, and I’m trying to see about getting it listed for free on most e-book sites. I also put it up on Wattpad this evening, so it should be available for anyone to read free there.

My next project will be to complete A Season of Kings, and during that project I’m still working on completing the first book of the series I’m writing with Marie. Hopefully, we can get that one moving forward, as I seem to have a lot more hope for that series than any of the fantasy ones I’m writing.

Money is going to be tight, mainly because of the way Spectrum Health completes the quitting process. I can’t ask for my payout money from my retirement until the last paycheck comes through from SH, and unfortunately the way they work it out, it will probably be about a month before the last “paycheck” comes through, and THEN I’m allowed to put in the paperwork for that money. Which means February might be a bit crappy when it comes to paying my bills, and unfortunately I’m not really sure what the solution to that is going to be. If it’s not one thing, it’s another….

Another project I’ve been outlining lately is one that I had on a back burner for many years now, and that’s my Return to Camelot series. Every time I write a specific novel, I find myself getting tons and tons of ideas, dialogue, and even scenes from the next novel I’ll be writing after the ones I’m currently working on. For some reason, Return to Camelot has been the one that’s been building momentum lately. All I can do is write down the ideas and hope that I can get to the actual writing soon. My working titles for that series are:

1. The Once and Future King

2. Return to Camelot

3. Le Morte D’Arthur

They’re not massively original, but they’re working titles for now, and they seem to push the ideas of what exists within each volume. I’m kind of looking forward to writing that series, as I wrote the first couple of chapters years ago and still refer to those chapters from time to time because they were so very good. Yes, a writer can admire his own work from time to time. You wouldn’t believe how critical I am of practically everything else that comes through my word processor.

For some reason, every night I seem to be dreaming about work (the old job). I keep dreaming how someone is telling me I have to do something and it must be done on a deadline that has already passed. And then an inner voice tells me, hey, you don’t work here any more, and I kind of toss and turn through that. I guess the subconscious does that to you when you’ve been living and breathing a job for so long, especially one that was becoming really good at developing arbitrary deadlines and then sitting on the results for weeks while new deadlines are thrown at you for new work that will then be sat on as soon as it met its completion. Anyway.

So, that’s kind of where things are right now. And as so few people tend to read my blog, aside from the spider sites in China that seem to access my page hundreds of times a day, it would be nice to hear from people who are actually reading it. Otherwise, I might just have to discontinue it, as it’s turning very much into a diary where I’m the only one who is really reading it.

Am I Wasting My Time With This Blog (does anyone even read it)?

Computer Games, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , ,

For some time now, I’ve been wondering how many people actually read my blog, if any. I mean, I know a few people read it, and those are mainly my close friends. But other than a half dozen, I’m not sure what I’m doing here really equates to a useful use of my time. Considering I’ve been doing this blog for years now, one would think that it would have received a bit better of a reception than absolutely little to none.

Strangely enough, I get lots of responses to my posts. But they’re all from spammers. And I mean A LOT of responses from spammers who are basically trying to sell their stuff, attempt to steal my ID, or whatever else they’re doing when they attempt to get people to click on their useless links.

But not so many people. Every now and then I’ll get a 1/10 vote on an old post of mine, where someone generally didn’t understand I was being ironic (or sarcastic) and then thinks that when I argue that Iran is doing good things by hurting women again, I’m being sarcastic, in that I don’t support them in their actions. Instead of any response from anyone, I’ll get someone who gives me a 1/10, a thumbs down, or a rant about how men like me are keeping women in the Middle Ages of sexual politics, meaning they didn’t understand the article, or didn’t read far enough into it to care enough to try to understand it. That gets really frustrating when that kind of stuff ends up being the only responses you tend to get.

This blog was designed as a place for a political scientist/communications person who sees the world through really bizarre lenses (including an anarchist one as well) to talk about all sorts of issues, ranging from politics, to game design (I used to work as a game designer years ago), to academics (I have more degrees than I can count, which is really an appeal to our horrible educational system that didn’t teach me to count very well), to humor, to my comic strip The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Legospaceman (which you can access from the links on this page), to technology, to my unusual dating history (in which I end up having to fear almost every woman I’ve ever dated), to pretty much anything else. Yet, I don’t think this blog gets out to anyone. Or to very few.

I’ve tried all sorts of “have your blog seen by millions” techniques, but I’ve mainly failed. No one but spammers seems to know I exist. If others are seeing it, they’re being very quiet, like that strange person who sneaks into my house and steals all of my left socks.

The blog was originally a showcase for my novel writing, but that never seemed to do much either. Years later, and a dozen or so novels later, I’m as popular as someone who has yet to write his or her first word.

So, I’m going to throw this out to you all. If you read it, let me know. If not, I’m probably going to give this a few weeks to make its way into the cobwebs of the web and then close down my blog for good. Why waste time and money on something nobody is enjoying?

What’s with all of the Spam Comments on WordPress Blogs?

Business, Social Networking, Writing, , , , ,
Sometiimes you have to back up your words

For those of you who are reading this through an RSS reader or because it was imported from the original blog, you might not understand the concept of this post, but it’s getting to the point where I really have to say something. I have a WordPress-themed blog, where I have taken a great deal of work to configure the blog itself. It’s not your average thrown together blog, mainly because that’s how I designed it. But one of the things I’ve noticed is that no matter what I do, I can’t stop from getting hundreds of spam messages a day. And they’re ridiculous, too. I have yet to figure out WHY, and it drives me freaking nuts.

I get comments like this: “You’re definitely on the right track with this issue, and I read this blog every day because not too many people can deal with an issue like this one like you do.” Now, on the surface, you’d think, wow, someone reads my blog and agrees with me. But they don’t. They don’t read my blog, AND they don’t agree with me. Instead, they somehow spider into my blog and send random shitty comments that are generic in nature, meaning absolutely nothing whatsoever. Which causes me to have to go through and delete HUNDREDS of comments a day that are all stupid, ridiculous, and a waste of time.

Another one: “I love your WordPress theme for your blog. Did you do it yourself? Can you give me some hints on how to design my own?” In the beginning, when I received the first of 300 of these, I actually believed this was a sincere question from someone. But again, you have to focus on the generic level of the comment to realize this person is sending out these questions to EVERYONE who has a WordPress themed blog. Why they do it? I don’t know. They’re probably selling some stupid piece of shit spam thing that no one is EVER going to buy, but they’re convinced if they keep spamming people with their garbage, they will eventually get someone so stupid to respond that that person will also be anxious to give them money for ridiculous crap. Or maybe they’re trying to hack systems. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I just wish they’d stop.

Now, I’ll add this as well. Every time I make a comment like this, someone thinks he or she is inventive and sends me a generic response as a joke. Well, please don’t. It gets deleted with the rest of them because if it sounds remotely like one of these comments, I go at warp speed and delete them all. Which means, if you thought you were being clever, no one will ever know. I don’t say this to sound mean or uncaring; it’s just you don’t realize the magnitude of this problem. It is so out of control that I devote zero time to dealing with it as humor.

The problem with this is that I am pretty sure there are actually people who do comment on my posts and actually read what I have to say. This makes it that much harder to connect with them, and I really do want to connect with the people who read what I have to write. So, it would not surprise me if real comments are being thrown into my spam filter and deleted with the hundreds of others per day. I wish that wouldn’t happen, but what can I do?

Anyway, back to what I’ve tried saying before. If you’re really interested in communicating with me, PLEASE, and I emphasize PLEASE, make your comment have relevance to the particular post you’re responding to. Avoid being generic. If I post about Smallville, please talk about Smallville in your comment. If it’s about writing, please respond about something that has something to do with the topic of writing I was discussing. THAT will get a conversation going, and I’d LOVE to talk to you. It’s almost to the point where I’m thinking of just removing the comment feature completely because of how useless it’s been so far and how much spam I have to filter out of it on a daily basis.

When is it Okay to Steal Another’s Ideas?

Business, Economics, Memoirs, Politics, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , , ,

The other day, I was reading through different blogs, specifically looking for information about a political theory that’s always been one of my pet projects. Because my theory has never made it into the mainstream as theories go, I’ve always followed the ideas that resonate around it, wondering if the political atmosphere of academia will ever change to where my idea might start to have a bit more merit. Anyway, the other day I was following a conversational trend on a particular economic impact on international negotiations when I came across a drawn graph that immediately struck me as very similar to my theory. Well, to be honest, it was not only similar, it was the exact same graph I had drawn five years ago as an explanation of my theory.

I checked for attributions on the graph, wondering where my  name would appear, but none was given. As a matter of fact, the “author” indicated through lack of any information that the graph was completely of his own doing, that he had come up with the economic graph to prove a point that he was making.

I just stared at it, flabbergasted that someone would actually take my own work and claim it as his own. I read through the rest of his theorical post, and what I discovered was that he didn’t even use the graph correctly. So there was my information, used, abused and done so wrongly.

I sent off an email, asking for clarification of where he got the information, but never received a response. I sent off another, and still got no response. I posted a comment on his blog following the article, asking for some clarification, and a few days later, my comment was deleted. No explanation.

I had heard there were people like this, but I never believed it would ever actually happen to me. I mean, my theories are generally nuts, or so out of the mainstream that I don’t expect anyone other than a deranged scientist to ever agree with me. But there it was. Right in front of me. I sent one more email asking for any type of clarification, and the next thing I saw, the whole post just disappeared. The author never responded to me once.

What bothered me the most was that the “author” is somewhat respected in the field, which means that if the two of us were ever in the same room together, everyone would have wanted to talk to him and probably would have ignored me completely. Personally, I have no desire to drag someone’s name through the mud for reasons that really substantiate doing so, but an inner feeling asks me how many others this guy probably does the same to as well. For all I know, my situation is a very isolated incident. But who knows? Certainly not me. Or I. Never really got that grammar rule right.

As a writer, I always assumed that somewhere down the line someone would probably steal one of my ideas, but as an academic, I never actually believed it would happen in academia, or from someone who actually has a lot of respect in the field. Dont get me wrong. I’m not bitter, and I have no desire to go after someone for something like this. Personally, I’ve always accepted that most of my political theories will die with me before they ever get implemented by anyone with the ability to use them.

So I guess I’m just ranting. That’s what blogs are for, aren’t they? I mean, what would Charlie Sheen do? Don’t we always ask that when stuck in a dilemma?

Stop me before I buy more books! And other complaints when it comes to running a blog.

Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

For some reason, I’m a glutton for books. I buy them even when I don’t need them. Case in point: Today. I was at Barnes & Noble just wandering around, minding my own business, when out of the blue BAM! Another book came at me from behind and forced me to buy it. I didn’t even get to the cash register before another book, hiding behind the greeting cards and magazines jumped out WHOOSH! and there I was at the counter with two books I didn’t need. But no matter how hard I tried to get them out of my hands, they wouldn’t leave, and I ended up having to shell out another forty some bucks to the evil cash register lady for the purchase of said books.

I had actually gone into B&N looking for a specific book on Twitter information. I recently realized I had this Twitter account that I never really did anything with, so I decided I would see about optimizing Twitter to see if it might actually benefit my blog. My blog has been one of those underperforming vehicles that has been driving me nuts for some time. I write posts constantly, and I seem to have a massive amount of phantom traffic, but I’ve never really been able to do anything with my blog to make it worthwhile to me. I’m not talking about making money, like others try to do with their blogs. I’m more interested in just getting people to read my stuff, and I’m constantly struggling to do so.

Some months back, I joined Open Salon and started blogging there, and what I discovered was that if I didn’t spam the crap out of people, I really didn’t get any real traffic to my blog. And that bothered me. I decided to stop emailing people every time I wrote a post because I started to feel that it was bothering people rather than letting them know that I had more posts for them to read. I know that I have started to get annoyed at the amount of emails I get from people who post every day (and then email me every day), so I decided I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of bloggers. Unfortunately, the alternative is even worse. My blog is practically invisible as a result.

It’s partly frustrating because it kind of falls into the same paradigm problem I have with my writing career. I know I’m good at writing, but I can’t get a career jumpstarted no matter what I do. So I end up writing for myself or for the wind (or whatever other dorky metaphor fits the situation). My main blog site has been active for years, and it’s almost like I started it yesterday, judging from the amount of communication that comes across it. It’s a lot like my life these days. I get the idea no one even knows I’m alive, even though I’m still kicking and screaming. Just screaming in silence with the volume turned way down so as not to wake up the neighbors.

Gaming the System

Social Networking, , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Google having to clean up its ranking system because other companies have figured out how to game the system. I find this somewhat interesting because no matter what I do, I can’t seem to figure out how to get more people to read my blog. I guess if I cheated and did all sorts of surreptitious activity, I could probably get a whole bunch of people to accidentally wander onto my site. But that’s just wrong, and it makes me wonder why so many other companies and people would do that sort of thing, when all it really does is piss off people in the long run.

The thing that really bothers me is the amount of “traffic” I receive from people who don’t actually read my blog but submit spam messages as comments. My spam filter catches 99 percent of them, but it bothers me that my spam filter has to actually catch them in the first place. Why would companies and people go through so much trouble to spam the hell out of someone’s random blog site? Why are there people spamming me with stupid comments that have absolutely no relevance to anything I’m talking about? Why would people include fake comments that are designed to fool me into thinking they actually read my posts and commented on them?

I’m talking about comments that say something like: “I really agree with your perspective on this point, and this has caused me to want to keep coming back here and reading your blog.” Fake comment. Not real. Someone bullshitting for the sake of some stupid purpose that has no significance to the bigger picture whatsoever. Why do it? Why expend your energy trying to fuck up someone’s blog with nonstop spam messages that mean nothing whatsoever to anyone?

And they spam the crap out of my spam filters, too. It’s not bad enough that one or two get through, but someone will spend days spamming the same message to my comments that say absolutely nothing but pretend to be actual comments to my posts. Why do it? What purpose does it serve to disrupt the normal postings of someone you’ve never met before, have nothing to do with whatsoever, and have no incentive to make miserable just for the sake of some futile attempt at gaining traffic that you’re never going to get.

Why do it?

30,000 hits and no comments

Writing, , ,

I just noticed for the first time today that my blog now has 30,000 hits. That’s almost as much as a sex site gets in a whole three hours, and 29,732 more than Lindsay Lohan gets when she blogs about integrative calculus, so I found that to be seriously impressive. But what bothers me is that I have no comments. I get a few comments on facebook from time to time, but for some reason this widget doesn’t seem to import them anymore to my blog, which makes it seem like my blog has everything but tumbleweeds turning over and over again.

Yet, I get dozens of spam messages a day. So, somehow the spammers are finding my site and trying to get me to advertise their crap. But real people aren’t reading me. Or at least I can’t tell if they’re reading me because the only actual responses I get are spammers. And I’m convinced they’re not really reading me because when you get messages that hit my spam folder like: “I really like what you’ve done with your site, and I’m going to subscribe to your feed. Now, are you sure you understood Justin Bieber’s argument in his new single properly?”

Maybe I’m just wasting my time with this blog. I really don’t know. I know my stuffed animals read it, but they read everything I put in front of them, so I don’t even have to put it on the net for them to read what I have to write.

A Few Comments That Need To Be Said

Economics, Memoirs, Politics, Uncategorized, Writing, , , , , , ,

I thought I would take a moment and just make a few comments that need to be said. Unfortunately, only my stuffed animals read my blog. Well, my stuffed animals and my imaginary girlfriend…from Canada…and maybe that mysterious group of government assassins who have been trying to replace my nonfat milk with soy products, but you probably get the point.

1. If a news article is ever written about me that includes the phrase, “and police searched the wood chipper for signs of the body” then let’s just say that I’ve probably reached a saturation point of relevance and should immediately be put to sleep. Or if police were searching the wood chipper for signs of ME, then let’s just say that I’ve probably got worse problems than anything I might complain about on my blog.

2. I’m convinced Craigslist has no further relevance or importance now that they have removed the adult ads. I’m sorry, but it has no purpose any more. I attempted to put up a personal ad the other day, and it never showed up. The system said I did everything right, but it just never made it to the production side of the house. This has convinced me that all the site was ever really good for was advertising fake personal ads that were really a cover for underage girls selling sex to dirty old men and local law enforcement. Or it was local law enforcement trying to pretend to sell potential sex to dirty old men to put them in jail for wanting sex with underage girls. Or it was NBC trying to snare dirty old men trying to find sex with underage law enforcement officers, or something like that. Either way, underage girls were involved and so were dirty old men, so do the math, and you can probably figure it out. Let’s just shut down Craigslist for good. It doesn’t make sense any more.

3. No politicians are honest. At all. Oh, they talk a good game, but they’re really only interested in pretending to be something they’re not so they can get a job they probably don’t deserve. We should force them to create Craigslist ads instead, and then we can hire the underage girls to run our government. I’m just saying….

4. The “check engine soon” light on your car is a boldface liar. It doesn’t want you to check your engine. It wants you to bring your car back to the dealer so they can charge you $99 to tell you that they need to charge you $299 to replace a sensor that tells you to check your engine soon. What they’re really doing is replacing the light in the sensor so that it will go off two days after you leave the dealer’s shop. Mine did. And now it goes off for a week, goes on for a week, and then repeats the cycle. There’s nothing wrong with the engine, other than it has a faulty sensor that keeps telling me to check the engine soon. Or perhaps my engine is just lonely and wants friends. Maybe I should get a sensor that goes off whenever I’m in public that says “check duane soon…he needs friends”. And then people can pay me $99 for me to tell them they need to pay me $299 so that I’ll tell them to pay me $99 very soon.” I’m just saying….

5. The lives of celebrities aren’t important to the rest of us. It’s one thing to follow the news and be interested in celebrities. It’s another to have it thrown in our faces nonstop as if it’s important. I was tuning into the news the other day, and the point-counterpoint was all about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I’m sorry, but there’s the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election around the corner, and all sorts of actual news stories that are really news. We really don’t need too political partisans going back and forth about what kind of role model Lindsay Lohan is presenting for young girls who don’t even know who she is because she hasn’t been relevant in about a decade now. Same with Paris Hilton. Since her last actual television reality show, she hasn’t been relevant, significant or even interesting in a very long time now. The people who remember her are no longer capable of being influenced. The ones who are capable of being influenced really have never heard of her and probably think she’s some old woman who their parents might have found interesting. It’s amazing how socially irrelevant celebrities become in a few years.

6. The publishing industry sucks. No two ways about it. I get so discouraged trying to make it as a published novelist, only to find out that Snooki or Tyra Banks is being given a huge publishing contract to churn out drivel that my pack of monkeys (who write Shakespearean sonnets…remember them? The ones who if they write enough gibberish will eventually duplicate a Shakespearean sonnet) could have written just as well. Bah, I get so upset at this sort of thing.