The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for March 2013

Bad Content Is Like Bad Sex

by 14 Comments

Heeland Coo
I hate when I have a bad hair day.

Poorly written content reminds me of bad sex and sloppy kissers.

It should be filled with exhilaration, excitement and anticipation of a deeply moving and spiritual moment yet when push comes to shove you wind up disappointed and deflated.

Words Should Make You Feel Something

A good post should make you think and or feel something. A good post shouldn’t be a like a bad date where you wonder what you were thinking when you agreed to go out with he/she.

You shouldn’t finish reading it and wonder if there is anyway to get back the five minutes you just lost. You shouldn’t be able to relate it to the night you spent with Rusty or Susie, the human car wash whose idea of making out was to kiss your lips once and then lick your face like a dog who just discovered peanut butter.

But this content war we are in now is doing just the opposite of what it should do.

It is creating a culture of consumption that isn’t focused upon creating content that provides real and significant value because there isn’t time to do that.

It Is a Mistake

It is a mistake that you don’t want to give into. Think about it for a moment, none of us want to be known or remembered for being the bad kisser. You don’t want to be the punch line of the story about the worst moment of intimacy.

Nor do you want to be known as the blogger whose content is consistently inferior.

Figure out a better way of doing it. Look for an angle.

It Doesn’t Have To Be About Sex

You don’t have to be as graphic as I am, although I can tell you that when I compare a poorly written post to being caught by a tooth it is something that people remember.

There are lots of other alternatives such as comparing poor content to empty calories, but that is your choice.

The point here is that if you want to break free of the clutter and be noticed you need to do more than just come up with catchy or outrageous headlines. You need to be able to provide content that has some substance.

You need to figure out how to make people think and or feel something. Use your words effectively and good things will come from it.

Or keep pumping out that crap and be known as the person who was so bad their partner fell asleep right in the middle of things.

The choice is yours.

Get Up, ‘Cuz Mickey Loves You

by 18 Comments

Dear Grandpa,

I intended to write this letter to you on your 99th birthday, but life got in the way and I am a bit late.  You know you weren’t ignored or forgotten and I am confident that you would appreciate why I pushed this off for a day.

Call it a grandson’s privilege or whatever you want.

In August it will be two years since you died. I wrote a post called He Died A Hero and linked to a bunch of other things I had written about you and your colleagues.

I had to leave home to take a new job and have enjoyed it immensely. It has been one hell of an adventure and there have been more than a few times where I wanted to pick up the phone to tell you about what is going on and to check on you, but you don’t answer calls in the traditional manner so I didn’t do it.

Your great grandchildren speak of you often and last month you and grandma were missed. We talked about you both and I shared some stories about you all. There were lots of laughs and many smiles but I didn’t share all that was on my mind.

Some of it was because it wasn’t appropriate for the setting and some was because I keep some things in the vault.

The Love Of Your Life

There is no doubt grandma was the love of your life. Seventy-six years of marriage is nothing to sneeze at and I can’t begin to imagine what that is like.

Grandma died on the night of my 14th wedding anniversary and I have never forgotten the car ride after her funeral. It was just you and I in the car. You told me more stories and then talked about how you were holding hands when you realized she was gone.

I wrote about it because it was important to remember and because these are the kind of details the younger members of your family will want to know about one day. Your great grandson has never forgotten how the three of us drove together to the tux shop to get fitted for the wedding, but I haven’t told him that I knew then you weren’t planning on hanging out for it.

He doesn’t need to know that story now, but one day I’ll tell him about how you told me you were going to tell grandma about all that she had missed and how the tone of your voice had changed.

I have said many times that you died of a broken heart and I have never once doubted that. There is nothing wrong with it, but you’ll forgive me again for saying that I wish you would have stuck around a bit longer.

Selfish Reasons

I wanted you around for my own selfish reasons as well as for the kids. They really wanted you to live to be a 100 and I remember them asking why you couldn’t hold on just a little bit longer.

I think you would have laughed at that and I know grandma would have appreciated it.

We miss your stories, your smile and your laughter. We miss a million other things as well.

You and my other grandfather were so similar and yet so different.

Sometimes I miss listening to the two of you argue about where the best place to get a hot dog was in 1938, ’42 and all of the other years you included.  I can’t tell stories as well either one of you, but I am working on it.

And I especially can’t tell your stories and sometimes that is what makes me miss you most of all. I loved hearing them, didn’t matter how many times you told them.

So Long, But Not Goodbye

Anyway, I have started a new life and I wish you could see it. Before I left I stopped by to visit and I made a point to check on grandma first because I know you would have wanted that.

It is late so I have to get to sleep now so I will say so long, but not goodbye.

I kept my promise and will always do so.

Love,

Your Grandson

Warning: You Can’t Change The Past

by 1 Comment

Head in Hands

Passamore holds a special place in my heart. It is a busy street that has a ton of shops and lots of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicles. For years mom refused to let me walk down Passamore by myself. I remember begging her to let me do it. It is on the way to school and lots of kids walk it. Those of us who don’t are called babies, but none of this bothers mom. She says to remember the line about sticks and stones, tells me that one day I’ll be old enough.

Eventually the day comes and I rejoice. I am eleven years old and I walk to school via Passamore. Dad gives me a dollar to celebrate with and I use it on an Apple Fritter in the same Dunkin Donuts that we are sitting in. This is a happy place or it was then. These days it holds a different place in my heart, one that is far darker than before.

Dad and I order two cups of coffee, his small, mine large. He tells me that one day my metabolism won’t work quite so efficiently and that my body might not appreciate all that caffeine I am injecting into it. I laugh and tell him that “I hope I die before I get old.”  He nods his head. I don’t know if gets the reference, music isn’t his thing. For a few minutes we talk about my new job and I tell him that I miss having vacations. He laughs and tells me that I better get used to it, college is over. We talk about this and that and he mentions that he wants to take mom on a trip to Europe, says that as soon as my sisters are out of the house they’ll start traveling.

I nod my head and excuse myself to hit the john. Dad makes a crack about me aging before his eyes, not even a full cup of Joe and I am running to the bathroom. I am only in there a minute but it is one that will haunt me forever. When I come back out I see a man pointing a gun at dad. Stringy hair, dirty jacket and torn cargo pants with a gun. His back is to me. Dad never looks away from the man, but I know he knows I am there.

Dad is seated and I am worried about what might happen. I can’t stand still.  Two quick steps and I’m airborne. I slam into him and we hit the ground.

Twenty some years later I’m seated in the same Dunkin Donuts, except this time I am in uniform. The kid I am training is in the same john I was in the day of. One day I might tell him why donuts make me cranky, but not today. He hasn’t earned the right to know. One moment in time changed everything for me and nothing will ever be the same.

+++++

Editor’s note: This story is fiction. It originally appeared here.

I decided to run it with some small edits because I really do believe  Content Marketers Should Write Fiction and there is merit in revisiting and repurposing old posts. It is why I say I run a green blog.

More discussion to come about how to draw in a reader and hold their attention. If you have comments I would be grateful if you shared them below.

Easy Choices Lead To Hard Decisions

by 8 Comments

Climbing Muellers Peak, Summer

Another Saturday night here in the Lone Star state and I am seated at my desk thinking about mountain climbing and how I feel like some kind of cross between Sir Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa.

One guy got the glory and the other got to carry the crap up the mountainside.

It is not entirely fair to characterize either man as being just shlepper or just an adventurer, but sometimes it is reflective of how we feel and why sometimes we take a “grass is always greener perspective.

There is Truth in Song Lyrics

There is truth in song lyrics which is why it is fun to listen to and quote from them. I often think of Rush and their song Freewill:

“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that’s clear-
I will choose Free Will.”
Emphasis mine

Sometimes things happen and you can’t let yourself get caught up in questions about whose fault it is or if there is a reason you can point to.

Most of the things that led to the choices I had to make here were things outside of my control. I won’t lie and say I didn’t try to analyze and understand so that I could prevent it from happening again because I did.

I could create an infographic or write a report that tied it up in a neat little package but it wouldn’t change the fundamentals which demonstrate how many things were outside of my control.

Truth is it made me feel better for about ten minutes to see how I did the best I could and then I was over it because easy choices led to hard decisions.

What Does That Mean?

What it means is when I analyzed the situation I came up with three choices none of which I liked much, but it didn’t change the need to choose and move.

My children haven’t been particularly enamored of several of these but my job as their father requires a willingness to do things because they have to be done and not because they are fun.

When I took a harder look at things the easy choice became a hard decision.

It was logical, rational and smart but tough because it turned things upside down and since it didn’t provide a picture of what would come afterwards I couldn’t show them how it would make life better.

The Magic 8 Ball didn’t help either, so I resorted to the “I promise it will work out mode and gave them a hug.”

I do believe it to be so, but it is not necessarily easier for me because of that.

Time Will Tell

Time will tell whether these moves leave me playing Tenzing or Hillary. Perhaps at a later date we can have a philosophical discussion about the benefits of being Tenzing, because there are many, but for now we’ll set that aside.

In the interim Raiders of The Lost Ark is playing and I have to go watch because Indiana Jones is still someone I want to be when I grow up.

What about you?

What Are Your Favorite Song Lyrics?

by 14 Comments

Microphone

Every so often we like to mix things up and run a lighter post and today is one of those days. What are your favorite song lyrics?

Here is a partial list of mine:

“Let the frozen cities crumble, crumble and fall
That’s alright, I don’t mind at all
Let ’em all tumble right into the sea
Well that’s just fine, that’s alright with me
Since you came down the line
I can’t sleep at night, I got one thing on my mind
That’s every day, every night
I wanna be with you”

I WANNA BE WITH YOU- Bruce Springsteen

“So you’re scared and you’re thinking
That maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright
Oh and that’s alright with me

You can hide `neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I’m no hero
That’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair”

Thunder Road- Bruce Springsteen

“Will you walk with me out on the wire
`Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider
But I gotta find out how it feels
I want to know if love is wild
girl I want to know if love is real”

Born To Run- Springsteen

“Let us be lovers,
We’ll marry our fortunes together.
I’ve got some real estate
Here in my bag.”

America- Simon & Garfunkel

“They held each other tight as they drove on through the night they were so excited.
We got just one shot of life, let’s take it while we’re still not afraid.
Because life is so brief and time is a thief when you’re undecided.
And like a fistful of sand, it can slip right through your hands.’

Young Turks- Rod Stewart

“May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.”

Forever Young- Bob Dylan
“And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.”

Danny Boy

Related Links:

Why Content Marketers Should Write Fiction

by 6 Comments

Writing Books

When you ask yourself why someone like me who dislikes the term Content Marketing has used it in a headline you can answer the question with a very simple explanation.

I see an SEO benefit in using it in my posts and no significant upside in constantly trying to convince others to use a better term like storytelling.

However when people ask me to explain what content marketing is I always tell them our job is to act as a professional storyteller for whatever brand/product/service/company or person we are representing.

Why Content Marketers Should Write Fiction

If the professional goal of a content marketer is to tell a convincing story about why a business or consumer should purchase a particular product or service one of the best things they can do is work on their craft which is why it makes sense to write fiction.

The rules of storytelling for content marketers and fiction writers are similar in they both require a beginning, middle and end. However the beauty of fiction lies in the freedom to stretch your skills and not limit yourself to reality.

You can say your hair care product restores a full head of hair and exudes pheromones that are more effective than Love Potion Number 9 without fear of backlash from the FTC or consumers.

But if you ask me it is much more fun to simply let go and just write.

Go tell a story about something totally different. It is part of why I have a separate blog that is dedicated to fiction.

Two Sample Stories

And yes, I am going to share two short stories I have written. It is your choice to read them or skip ahead to them comments where I would love to have a discussion about your thoughts on whether you agree or disagree about the value of content marketers writing fiction.

Plenty of Time

I could hear the echo of my father’s voice inside my head, “Boys don’t ever hit girls.”

He ignored my protests and told me he didn’t care what my sister had done. It didn’t matter if she hit me first or what she used. I was a boy. We weren’t allowed to fight back that way.

I told him again it wasn’t fair and he shrugged his shoulders at me. “We are bigger and stronger. Use your words to settle things. They will.”

He was right and so was I. Thirty-seven years ago they didn’t fight fair and they still don’t now.

I suppose the big difference between then and now is that it was much easier as a young boy to look at them as “annoying people” whose sole purpose was to bother boys.

Puberty changed all that. Those “annoying people” cast a magic spell on me and suddenly I went from not noticing any of them to having trouble focusing in school.

Hormonal overdrive and young love kept me from recognizing the kind of trouble that lack of focus could get you into.

But I found out.

Her name was Tammy. She was a tall blonde with bright green eyes and an electric smile. At 14 she was two or three inches taller than I was and quick to lord it over me.

She spent our freshman year of high school doing her best to tease and torment me. I tried to give it back to her and almost got my head taken off.

I don’t remember exactly what I said but I remember she was angry. When I told her she was acting like my sister she lost it. She stopped talking to me. When we passed each other in the halls she just looked through me, it was like I didn’t exist.

You would think that I would have appreciated the respite from the teasing and the incessant comments about my height, but I didn’t.

We didn’t speak again until November of the following year and to this day I can’t tell you if she even noticed, but I did.

Her refusal to speak made me so angry that I walked over to her. “You aren’t as special as you think you are!”

She just laughed, “look who finally grew.”

Until she mentioned it I hadn’t noticed that I was finally taller than she was.

I wanted to yell at her again but that laughter and the smile that accompanied it took the fight right out of me.

We went on our first date two weeks later and three months after that we lost our virginity in her aunt’s pool house.

It was young love and a healthy dose of young lust.

Her father almost put the fear of god into us. He came home early one day and surprised us.

We heard him and I tried to jump out of bed, but Tammy was fearless. She told me to relax and said there was plenty of time.

That became our line and our little joke. Life was filled with plenty of time and much laughter.

When it came time to go to college we ended up attending different universities. Neither one of us was worried about our relationship. We thought it was strong enough to survive anything, but we were wrong.

I don’t know when she slept with him or how many times she did but I know it happened. I wasn’t blameless either.

The girl I hooked up with was just as tall as Tammy and had those long legs that I loved, except she was a brunette with dark eyes. The moment I kissed her I knew that things had to go farther and that something else was dying, but hormones don’t care about relationships.

Within six months or so we had both acknowledged that it was time to go our separate ways.

It was painful but also somewhat exhilarating. Tammy and I had done almost everything a couple could do together and I was excited to be with other women.

That 18 year-old boy felt like a kid in a candy shop and for a while I really enjoyed it, but I noticed very quickly that these girls didn’t respond like Tammy did.

She would do anything and they wouldn’t. Hindsight makes it easy to recognize that love was the difference but that kid didn’t know it.

By that time Tammy and I rarely spoke and if we did we usually found ourselves fighting but it wasn’t like those days in high school.

Eventually we just stopped talking.

Five years passed and then I ran into her at a New Year’s Eve party. At midnight we kissed and it was like no time had passed.

Thirty-five minutes later we walked into my apartment and stayed there for three days.

Two days later she left for a two year Peace Corps assignment in Africa. When she kissed me goodbye she said she loved me, laughed and told me not to worry because there was plenty of time.

She never wrote me.

Twenty-five years passed and the silence continued. We were just a memory.

Last week there was a knock at the door and I saw a beautiful blonde standing on my porch. It was like being transported in time, there was my Tammy, except it wasn’t.

She said her name was Heather and asked to come inside.

“My mom said if something happened to her I should find you. Her name was Tammy and I think you might be my dad.”

“What do you mean her name was Tammy?”

Her eyes filled with tears and so did mine. I guess we never did have plenty of time.

And our second story is:

The Beginning Of The End

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.