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Archives for October 2009
Ships
I try to be the guy I want to be when I am with her,
but it doesn’t work.
We ran our course,
sailed the sea and saw the things that we could,
and now two ships sail where one should be
Ice skating bear kills Russian circus hand
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) — A bear on ice skates attacked two people during rehearsals at a circus in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, killing one of them, Kyrgyz officials said Friday.
In the incident, which happened Thursday, the 5-year-old animal killed the circus administrator, Dmitry Potapov, and mauled an animal trainer, who was attempting to rescue him.
“The incident occurred during a rehearsal by the Russian state circus company troupe which was performing in Bishkek with the program, Bears on Ice,” Ministry of Culture and Information director Kurmangazy Isanayev told reporters.
It is unclear what caused the bear to attack Potapov, 25, nearly severing one of his legs while dragging him across the ice by his neck. Medical personnel were unable to save Potapov, who died at the scene.
The 29-year-old circus trainer Yevgeny Popov, who attempted to rescue Potapov, was also severely injured, according to doctors.
Add this to the list of ways I do not want to die. I really don’t want to be killed by an animal, especially a bear on skates. I wonder how close he got to the bear. I can’t really see the bear speed skating over to him, checking him into the boards and then taking him out.
Ouch.
Riding The Mommy Blogger Gravy Train Part II
Somewhere around my fifth blogiversary I found myself thinking more seriously about whether it was time to hang up my keyboard. It wasn’t as much fun anymore and I felt like my writing reflected that. But since it coincided with my 40th birthday I wondered if outside influences were affecting my feelings so I decided to try and shake things up.
So I set out on a blogging walkabout. At some point I stumbled onto some of the mommy blogs and started flipping around there. I hit a bunch of daddy blogs as well and found it kind of interesting. You know us parents, we love to exchange the war stories.
As I tooled around I noticed that there were a ton of blogs that were holding giveaways and or providing product reviews. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with this, but I hadn’t paid any attention to it before. It changed in part because of one blog. I can’t remember the name but I was astounded by how bad it was.
It was a combination of video and written posts that were just atrocious. Normally I would have just clicked away but it was clear to me that this blog was being sponsored by a few companies. It peaked my curiosity and I spent time clicking around trying to suss out what was going on.
After years in marketing/advertising I know that brands will follow the eyeballs, but this bothered me. The blog was cluttered with crap. The writing was abysmal and the video wasn’t much better. I suppose that you could argue that this made it more authentic, but I didn’t like it.
I blogged about it indirectly and wrote a post called Riding the Mommy Blogger Gravy Train. I followed up on that post with When Blogging Became a Business and Getting Paid to Write- The Bloggers Dream.
Since then I have been trying to put my thumb on why I am irritated with people who got into blogging solely for the purpose of trying to garner free trips and gifts from whomever would pay them. Why should I belittle professional shills who will do anything and say anything for a buck.
Is it a case of jealousy? Am I jealous that people saw and opportunity and took advantage of it? No. The answer is that I am not bothered by bloggers who happen to do reviews. I am bothered by shills who happen to blog. That may sound harsh or seem inconsistent, but it works for me.
And in the interest of full disclosure I have reviewed products in the past and will do so again in the future.
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Yesterday my pal at Fink or Swim and I spent a few minutes on Twitter tweeting a bit about a related topic. We went back and forth about whether free products and trips provide an undue amount of influence on the reviewer. I have a hard time with it.
If I provide you and your family with a free Playstation are you going to be fair and honest in your review. If your kids are laughing hysterically and your family is having a great time at Disneyland are you going to tell us about the sub par accommodations and how bad the food was.
Are you going to bite the hand that feeds you?
I am torn about this. Fink makes some good points about how all information is filtered and there are always questions about bias. He asked me if I thought that reviewers should pay for the products that they review.
I suppose that one of the reasons I subscribe to Consumer Reports is because it is supposed to be unbiased. They purchase their products and do not accept advertising. In theory the reviewers have no feeling one way or another about a brand.
That doesn’t mean that their personal feelings never get involved or that there is never any sort of influence, but it is better.
So what is the bottom line here? Well, I suppose that it is the same as it has always been. Buyer beware. Pay attention and use your own judgement. It is not impossible for someone to give an objective review of a free product/service that they received. But I am still skeptical.
Anyhoo, what do you think?
I Should Be Sleeping But Instead I am Listening To Music
One– U2 With Mary J. Blige
With Or Without You– U2
All I Want is You– U2
City of Blinding Lights– U2
Where The Streets Have No Name– U2
My Love Will Not Let You Down – Bruce Springsteen
Happy – Bruce Springsteen
Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Green Day
Young Turks – Rod Stewart
Jack & Diane – John Mellencamp
Dreamweaver – Gary Wright
Gotta Be Somebody – Nickelback
Latika’s Theme – Slumdog Millionaire
The Man Who Couldn’t Cry – Johnny Cash
Can’t Get It Out of My Head – ELO
Telephone Line – ELO
The Beginning
I was almost 25 when I left the city of my birth. It was time to go, time to move on and get away. There were new experiences to be had and the pain of what I had once been, what I had once had was too much. Everywhere I looked there were signs of the glory and the fall.
For most of my life I had been a scrapper, never afraid to fight, never willing to give up and not smart enough to get out. It was a self imposed punishment for sins that I had committed but was unwilling to discuss.
It is not much of a description, not very colorful at all. In fact it is rather ordinary, but that is ok, I am ordinary and I prefer it that way. If you stuck me in a crowd full of people you would be hard pressed to pick me out. It was like that in school, never did or said much in class. No need to draw attention to myself I did what I needed to do to get through and nothing more.
And for the longest time that had been enough, an average, nondescript existence. It suited me fine to be a guy who punched a time clock. But sometimes even the average man find himself in a situation that is beyond his control,a time in which he becomes something more than he has been.
But the question is not what he does to elevate himself but how he handles the elevation.
It was Friday night and I had just finished my shift at the plant. There was no rush to get home because there was no one to get home to, no wife, no family, no girlfriend, not even a dog. Just an empty house that was sparsely furnished.
Friday nights were not much different than any other night of the week. I’d go home, pop open a can of beer and stare blankly at the television screen content to let my brain turn to mush.
On this particular night I decided to stop at an ATM. I wanted to order a pizza and I had nothing but the spare change from the last time I had visited the liquor store. It wasn’t enough to buy a pack of gum, so I was forced to go to the bank.
There were two people ahead of me in line, a man and a woman and behind me there were a couple of teenage boys.
I didn’t see him approach. I didn’t notice anything about him including his presence until he was standing in front of us, waving a gun and shouting for our wallets. I have a bad habit of giggling when I am nervous. I don’t like being the center of attention and now was certainly a bad time to laugh, but laugh I did.
5’8 or so and about a buck twenty sopping wet with a bad haircut and a Judas Priest shirt, that is all he was, oh and he had a big gun and an even bigger attitude. He grabbed my collar and asked me what was so funny. Before I could answer he had grabbed the woman in front of me.
She cried as he pulled her in front of him and asked me if I thought that this was funny. I choked back a snigger and told him that it wasn’t. He told me that if I so much as smiled he would kill her. I wiped the smile off of my face.
It was the wrong thing to do, but I didn’t know it. The jackass cuffed me in the side of the head and laughed. It infuriated me, brought back memories of years of being teased and tortured by my someone who had been like an older brother to me. So I just reacted. I kicked him in the balls and smacked him in the head.
In the movies the gun falls and the hero (there has to be a hero) grabs it. Not here, not in my world. In my world when I slap him there is a flash of light and a loud noise. I am splashed with something, but it feels like hours before I realize that he just shot the woman, and that he did it involuntarily. The wetness I feel on my face is her blood.
I stand there in shock, numb and not really aware anymore of what is happening. The guy she had been with is beating the crap out of the jackass, the Judas Priest shirt is stained now, but it is with his blood.
There is a cop speaking to me, but I don’t answer. The real hero is lying, telling the officer that I saved everyone’s life, that if I hadn’t hit him the guy would have killed us all.
I didn’t hit him, I hit Georgie. It was Georgie I saw in front of me. It was Georgie taunting me, I just snapped and reacted. But I guess that somewhere inside I began to hear and to believe that I had been the hero, that when the bell rang I had come out swinging.
And that was really the beginning of the end.