Narishkeit

Five Songs

• Carefree Highway- Gordon Lightfoot
• I’m Free- Soup Dragons
• Guitar, Cadillacs- Dwight Yoakam
• American Girl- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
• If- Bread
• Stairway To Heaven- Heart Cover

The worst part about moving five times in three years is realizing how many things you can’t find because they have been packed, unpacked, packed, unpacked and potentially given away.

If my children told me they couldn’t find something I would ask them how many times I have told them to put it in the same place and then shake my head but I wouldn’t mention anything I shared in the lead.

Yeah, it is hypocritical but I call it making use of a teaching moment and frankly I do a better job of making myself feel stupid than anyone so there is no need to open that particular can of worms.

Part of me is ambivalent about these missing items because very few of them are of any significance because I tend to be very good at making sure I know where the important stuff is, except for two items.

Two things that I intentionally left in Los Angeles because I figured they would be safer there and that I would come back for them and now they are gone.

500 Ways To Have Better Sex & Earn Money From Blogging

That headline is classic linkbait and I don’t apologize for it mostly because it’s so ridiculous it is hard for me to believe anyone will take it seriously.

But if you are someone who took it seriously and want me to teach you how to have better sex and earn money from blogging I can do so.

I probably shouldn’t give this information away for free because I could turn it into an ebook or webinar and make a couple of bucks from it.

The problem with doing that is I might piss off some bloggers and since bloggers are a sensitive lot who believe that having a platform provides them with license to bitch about anything.

One can never be too careful with the hordes of the misinformed, misguided and self righteous who will pound you based upon their limited understanding of topics that are both simple and complex.

But since I promised the first tip I have to having better sex is to fall madly in love with the person you are sleeping with. If you follow my advice and fall head over heels for them and they for you those moments where you do the horizontal Mambo will be magical.

If you want to earn money from blogging figure out how to write a blog that is entertaining and educational and then charge people $25 for a year long membership.

Or alternatively you can try my favorite method and charge blog cancellation fees.

Just remember if  you don’t appreciate my methods and wish to file a complaint be cautious about your approach or you might find yourself in the same position as the Flying Clown.

Incidentally I did receive one comment for having the strangest audio log ever. I took that as a compliment but sadly was unable to monetize it.

Carefree Highways

I have been fortunate enough to drive cross country multiple times not to mention been on many other road trips around this grand old U.S. of A. and can tell you that some of those trips have been filled with more fun and interesting moments than you can shake a stick at.

Cross country trips by plane may be faster and have their set of moments but you don’t get to see and experience the tiny details of life that a car trip provides you with.

Car trips give you the opportunity to stop and explore local hot spots and museums that you will remember forever, sometimes because it was truly interesting and sometimes because you can’t figure out how many other idiots besides you got sucked into spending three hours perusing the Roly Poly Good Old Boys Sugar Shack.

By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet sometimes I blog for the love of writing and not solely for the magic that comes with being Internet Famous.

Although let’s be honest there is something very cool in being able to say you are Internet Famous and 28 people of the 3000 who went to a blogging conference shook your hand and walked away feeling like their lives had been changed.

Or maybe they walked away wondering why their hands were sticky and trying to figure out if there is a polite way to rub those aforementioned sticky hands on their pants.

The End Of Summer

My kids finished their first full day of school today. Technically they went back yesterday but it was a partial day so today was the first full day.

I of course made sure to do the Dad’s So Happy They Are Back In School Dance for them. Turns out they love that dance so much my daughter doesn’t want to share it with anyone else. She swore she won’t bring any friends home to see it and I promised to do it again for her.

She made a face so I told her that if she is really lucky one day I’ll do that dance for her boyfriend…in my underwear.

I figure there are two ways to handle the boys that one day may come home with her.

1) Tough and intimidating dad.

2) Crazy and unhinged dad.

If she is really lucky I might even do both.

Here is a separate but related question for you.

Are you having fun blogging?

If you can’t say yes you better figure out a way to make it fun or you might not last as long as some of the crazy old men of the blogosphere.

Second question, are the crazy old men of the blogosphere crazy because of blogging or did they start out that way.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

I have written many times about the lack of elevator etiquette. There are the people who try to take a cigarette into the car, those that dump buckets of perfume/cologne over their heads and then enter the car and there are those that think that it is ok to hold the door while they finish their conversation with someone who has chosen not to get on the elevator. How is that for a run-on sentence.

But today I encountered a new jerk. Today I rode the elevator with a man who thought that it was ok to share his flatulence with me. It is one thing to share these in silence. I’ll do my best not to cough and turn blue while holding my breath.

It is quite another thing to just let one rip” as if you haven’t a care in the world and it is even worse when you don’t apologize or excuse yourself. That is what happened today.

The man didn’t yell “fore” or “Geronimo” or give any indication that he was about to soil his pants and I am fairly certain that this was “wet.” I apologize for the detail, but I am still horrified by this and as a father who has changed many a diaper I know the signs.

It was loud. It was wet and was most aromatic in a most unpleasant way. I wanted to run. I wanted to flee but there was no place to go. The doors were closed and we were between floors.

As I gasped for breath I thought about my family and a sob escaped my throat. There was something so unfair and so unjust about this. My children were going to have to be told that their father died trying to rescue children from a burning building not that he died as a result of asphyxiation caused by noxious fumes from a common “fart.”

The thought was so upsetting. In my mind’s eye I could see them being teased on the playground. I could hear the vice-principal suspending my son for fighting and saw his mother explaining that he didn’t need to fight every time some kid tormented him about it.

Suddenly the elevator doors opened and I flung myself into the hallway. Gasping for air I rolled on the floor and inhaled the stale but ever so sweet after effects of the cleaning crew. The scent of their passage lingered in the air and I reveled in the gift of life I had received.

In the interim stinky rolled on out of the office and waddled down the hall. I carefully followed him and watched him enter an office. Later today we will show him how we deal with terrorism in this part of town.

The boys and I are going out for burritos and chili. Together we will enter his office and then drag him to a utility closet where we will unleash our own WMDs, mercilessly. And as all good terrorists do I’ll videotape this so that I can create more terror by uploading the file onto the net.

Flatulent Fred, judgment day is coming for you.

(Originally run here)

You can blame Sprint for the headline because if they can get away with these ridiculous ads with hamsters, dancing girl scouts and framilies I can write about content marketers dancing naked with feather boas.

In a writer’s life there are good editors and there are bad editors and then there is this memory from about 25 years ago:

I asked the guy to open his mouth and when he asked why I said it was because I heard an echo coming from his throat and I wanted to confirm that his little friend had his head shoved so far up his ass I would be able to see his eyes looking back at mine.

As a public safety tip you should know the remark above is not supported by Dale Carnegie as a way to win friends and or influence people.

However if you wanted to find out if you can throw a right cross and or take a shot to the gut it might be one way you can get the answers to your questions.

Hell if you are like me and you keep hearing these songs playing in your head you might want to tell people you know things because the best way to prove what you know is to show it.

The FitBit And A Writer

I ordered a Fitbit® Flex™ Wireless Activity & Sleep Wristband today.

Got to tell you I agonized over it a bit because I couldn’t decide if I was buying an expensive pedometer but I figured it is worth trying out.

The guys I normally play basketball with seem to have disappeared and for the moment I don’t belong to a gym so I need to find a way to increase the amount of exercise I am getting and to be more mindful about how much I am eating.

You long time readers know that my 19 year-old metabolism and I had a fight and that bastard left me so I am stuck with this 45 year-old one whose superpower is to enable me to eat 24 hours a day without feeling full.

Ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration but the reality is that sitting at the computer all day isn’t healthy and I can’t get a treadmill desk right now.

And I can’t afford to wait or come up with excuses for why I don’t do more so I decided that this little sucker might help me add a bit of structure to my diet and exercise and just maybe that will be the trick.

What I need more than anything else is to see some results because I am always good about responding to that. What I am less good at is starting.

It is that whole inertia thing.

Time to start rocking that boulder back and forth so we can get things moving again.

Content Marketers, Dad Bloggers and Exercise In General

Have I mentioned recently I dislike the term content marketer because it is meaningless marketing jargon?

Or should I talk about trying to stuff some keywords like dad bloggers into this post? Maybe I should mention the importance of exercise because it makes you feel better and when you feel better you are nicer, more productive and less likely to suddenly drop dead.

Yeah, that ending was harsh. Blame it on Sprint’s talking hamster. Stupid rodent.

Ask me about content marketing and I’ll tell you about storytelling because that is really what we are talking about. Storytelling is what humans have used for our entire existence to build relationships and move people.

When you want me to buy something for my teenage son the best way to motivate me is to use a story I can relate to that shows me how your product/service would be good for my son.

If you want to make me cry you’ll show me what tuition costs for camp and college. And then you you’ll understand better why most of my hair has fallen out.

Blogging Isn’t Supposed To Be Complicated

Blogging isn’t as complicated as some people make it out to be. You could fill the Grand Canyon with the excuses and reasons people provide but the reality is that people over think things.

Just ask my dear Shmata Queen and she’ll tell you this game isn’t hard to win at. Tell stories, engage, rinse and repeat.

And now if you will excuse me the kids are home from camp and it is time to go. See you in the comment section.

Everyday Is Punch A Social Media Expert In The Mouth Day should be amended to read that we should slap, kick, bite and gouge out the eyes of all the experts who keep telling us about the rules of writing and blogging.

I am not writing this because I am an angry white guy or because at 45 I am better, stronger, smarter, faster and humbler than the yahoos who keep pumping out the tripe that tells people how to become a successful blogger or writer.

In the interest of full disclosure some of those people have more readers, more subscribers, more pageviews and more book sales than I do. In short they have more of most of the things that people use to identify success.

That might mean they know something. That might mean you can listen to their advice. Hell I tell my children there is no reason to reinvent the wheel unless you need to.

Work smarter, not harder.

You Are Sucking The Wrong Thing

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
— Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)

Some of you are sucking in such a way that you are removing the joy of writing from all this. I don’t understand why you insist on using your teeth. I don’t understand why you take something that should put a smile on the face of those who practice it and turn it into work.

Yeah, I know that writing is damn hard and that sometimes it makes you want to tear your hair out. There are moments where it is as enjoyable as having a colonoscopy without any anesthesia and that makes me sad.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

It can also be viewed as being like a great workout. You can look at it as a marathon and you can look at the feeling you get when you click publish as being similar to that adrenaline rush you get when you finish the race/workout.

Climbing that hill can be painful and there are moments where you want to punch the person who signed you up for it in the mouth. There are moments where you wonder who is dumber– you or them.

But if you keep pushing and you come to the crest of the hill and see the ocean just in the distance it is hard not to be inspired. It is so damn easy to picture yourself lying on a beach or enjoying the water on a sailboat so you keep pushing and discover that running down hill can be hard too.

Gravity pulls you and you have to fight to avoid moving at breakneck speed but the end result is the same.

One big adrenaline rush and a sense of satisfaction.

About Castles

If you want first hand knowledge about what I can do to a castle you can ask Jericho. She’ll tell you that I do my research and that I’ll find the blueprints and study them, because there is always a weakness.

She’ll tell you I’ll try going through open doors and windows and that if I can’t get in that way I will go over or under the walls. If need be I’ll lay siege to the damn thing and tear it down stone by stone.

Old Jack wasn’t built for grace, but demolition is something I know a little bit about. The gift of having a handshake a gorilla fears can be used in many different ways and castles are perfect for exploring those.

But let’s remember sometimes the reason you tear something down is so that you can rebuild it. Sometimes you pull down the walls and lay a foundation upon the old one that allows you to build something that is more meaningful, more significant and ultimately more beautiful.

It is not always easy to edit a story you have written and edited multiple times. After a while you begin to lose your perspective but once you step back and catch your breath you sometimes notice things you didn’t see before.

The kids have heard me talk about this more than once. They know that sometimes I will hang upside down with one eye covered in plastic wrap just to get a different look at something.

Yeah it sounds goofy, but I am a writer and I know things. I am a writer and I see things. I am not always limited to conventional thought or approaches.

Sometimes I catch a flicker of something from the corner of my eye and I have to chase after that. It reminds me of being a sculptor.

All I have is a large slap of stone and I have no clue what it wants to be until I start chipping away at it. My characters are like that too. I have a basic understanding about who they are and what motivates them but I don’t know the details until I see how they behave in certain situations.

Hell if I know what they will do or how they will respond. They are people and people are often illogical, irrational and unpredictable.

But that is what makes us love them. Or maybe it is more accurate to say true love is when you accept them for who they are and not who you wish they would be.

Everyday Is Punch A Social Media Expert In The Mouth Day

And now if you will excuse me there are chumps to punch, bums to roll and stories to write. Don’t ask me what any of that means or if you do, do it in the comments.