Shoot…Blog Etiquette Tip, Please…

Nuts.  I am noticing now that I didn’t change the title on a recent post before publishing it.  So I am wondering…is it bad form to change the title and leave the rest as is? I am trying — trying — to be less of a boor and more interesting this year.  It would be a shame to start muddling that up before week one is done.

Please advise.  Then scroll down through this blog and find something interesting to read.  Tell your friends and family to do the same.

 

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Blogging Resolutions

I thought I would kick-start 2012 with a really awesome, trend-setting post…something like “Blogging Resolutions.”  But this guy has done that already and he actually hits on the things I should do so I’ll let my idea — if not my enthusiasm — die.

Plus nothing is quite as dull as meta-blogging, writing about writing, writing about should of, could of.   So let me start the new year with some advice and forgive me if I plagiarise Plato:

Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something.

With that in mind, I will check in again later when — I hope — I will have something to say.

Tell Me Again…Where Was I?

It is ok.  I’m back.

A friend told me my blog posts are too long.  They’re interesting, he said, but too long and confusing.  And he’s a Democrat so he’s smarter than most people out there.  So I took his opinion to heart, weighed it a bit, but now I have decided to come back and write.

Of course he made his comment right when I was starting to get good, too.

Mary Beth Hurt, The World According to Garp

In fact I was working up a rather important essay about Mary Beth Hurt.  Did you know she was in her early 30s when she played Robin William’s love interest in The World According to Garp?  I thought I might look up Mary Beth some day, but then I come to find out she’s near my mother’s age.  Still…boy, I tell you what…watching that film did things to me that I hadn’t felt since I was 12 watching Julie Gholson play Mary Call in Where the Lilies Bloom.  How nicely Mary Call fit my prepubescent lust back in 1975 … or whenever that was.  (I have written a little study of Mary Call, too.)

But anyway, back to Mary Beth Hurt…I had a good study going there.  Now…poof!  Nothing.  And whatever did happen to Julie Gholson and why can’t I find Where the Lilies Bloom on DVD?

It doesn’t matter.  I should write more about sales.  Or maybe more about politics.  One or the other, but not both?  What about walks in the park?  Can I carry on my battle against Bad Parker?

(I am being deliberately chatty with myself here to let my critic friend know that I am still what I am.)

I have been enjoying sales a lot more lately.  I am allowing myself to have fun.  That’s the trick.  And I literally mean…allow.  You need to let your natural propensities work its magic.  When I am listening to some old hot head ramble on and on and on about things I can’t stand to listen to anymore I find myself thinking things like “I wonder if I could take this guy in a fight.”  He thinks I am paying attention, but I’m trying to judge if he’s more of a slugger or a wrestler.

Or when the business owner’s wife comes out and lays in with her two cents…usually carelessly strung together drivel…I try to imagine what she looked like in her senior class picture.  It’s automatic.  I can’t help it.

A skilled salesman learns to listen and respond while figuratively — or metaphorically (sorry, critic) — undressing his client.  Whoops!  Did she just say return on investment?  Time to stop wondering if her socks — or other things — match.

So, ok…I wander and ramble.  I also mock ignorance and stupidity.  That all seems to go together quite nicely.  And I start a lot of sentences with conjunctions.  So what?  At least I don’t swear, especially the mother of them all:  That “F” word.  (Although the mocking ignorance of our society certainly does call for it often enough as in “fucking idiot”, “fucked up”, and “stupid mother fucker”.  All without irony.)

But I am back again!  Oh my, I am back again!  And I am going to get my Zemanta fixed.  Yes, Rok Pregelj, that means I’ll be Skypingyou.

My God! That looks like Michele Bachmann, but...wait...an intelligent woman speaking about women's rights? It must be a movie. (The World Accoridng to Garp.)

 

I look forward to taking cheap shots at radical right wing nut jobs, too.  Even if it is a simple thing to do.  This country needs help, simple or not!  We cannot sit around and let Republicans pile on the harm, right?  Ignorance, stupidity, and the Talibanizing of America are not good things.  Not at all.  You might think that we would be predisastered by now, but disaster looms on the horizon.  (Stop voting for Republicans.)

There’s a lot to do.  Let’s see what happens tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll write about wooly bears again.  It is that time of the year once again.  And wooly bears have a smart, easy confidence that’s hard to match.

Skip This Post.

Not Me.

No doubt America is on the road to perdition.  Today’s east coast earthquake proves that.  But sometimes I feel I might be heading the same way and wonder what the fuss is all about.

When I am not out boozing and insulting women, I am wasting my time watching old movies.  It really isn’t an unpleasant way to avoid more noble pursuits.  Like this blog, for instance.  (More on that in a moment.)  Some people might even think staying in with a good movie is a smart way to spend the evening.

I have my doubts.

I don’t want to advertise for Netflix, however I have been devouring films and old television shows like never before in my life.  I haven’t had cable television for years in large part because I watch so little television, but now I am watching films and television whenever I get a chance.  It is film noir now.  Earlier this month it was old science fiction.  In July I enjoyed old French cinema.  Sprinkled with these little film festivals I have watched plenty of old television…Andy Griffith, Star Trek, Sponge Bob, Julia Child…each educational in its own way.

Unfortunately, I am not getting anything done.  Nothing.  I do have a new blog in the works, but saying that only sounds empty.  Whoopee.  A new blog.  Where is it?  In fact this post is only here so I can look at today and say that I at least posted something on A Little Tour in Yellow.  (This post is a space holder.  A writing exercise.  A mere formality.)

So let’s get back on it.  Like America, I need to find my way.  Let’s see who gets on track first.  Me…or the United States of America!

First, I need a passion…

 

 

Time to Sleep with…

This is William Stokes. I have no idea who he is.

…the windows open.

(Hell, I just now discovered that I wrote the wrong headline for this post!  That must explain why my readership dropped.  The headline was supposed to be as it is now, clever!  It is clever, right?  And then the sentence finishes with “…the windows open.”  Nothing scandalous.  In fact a rather lame post.  Go ahead and read it as long as you are here…

Oh, one more thing, the Postive Airway Pressure was an attempt to trick people with breathing problems into reading my blog.  I’m all about class.  Now read the blog…as long as you’re here.)

This is where I am…this is how bad it has all become.  I thought I might write about Positive Airway Pressure as a way to trick people who are seeking information about sleep apnea therapy into finding my blog.  My thinking worked like this (ready?):  Write about Positive Airway Pressure and trick people who are seeking information about sleep apnea therapy into finding my blog.

Pathetic.

I had an angle, however.  I have been sleeping much of the winter with my bedroom windows open, open just a bit.  The goal is getting my bedroom almost uncomfortably cold so I can then burrow between fresh sheets deep under thick down comforters and wool blankets.  But many nights my bedroom doesn’t get cold at all.  And I thought…well, hell, maybe that’s positive airway pressure at work.  Do you suppose?

It made sense to me.  You know…the pressure outdoors being less than indoors drawing my warm bedroom air out rather than pulling the cool outdoor air in. Bingo, you have a case of  ”Positive” airway pressure.  Seems like a legitimate possibility. 

But that isn’t at all what we have going on here and I know CPAP therapy is a serious issue for many people.  Tricking them into finding my blog isn’t very thoughtful.  Not at all.   However, regardless of how you found this blog, I would hope that all of you with sleep apnea — or your spouse and/or bedmates who are awake because you’re snoring — would have time in your sleepless hours to read my freaking post about The Shining and conservativism in America today!  No one likes that post.  Just me.  And I wrote the damn thing so it is like a guy loving his own sociopath child…it hardly counts.

Therefore, while I’m sleeping in my overheated bedroom, will someone link my blog for me? 

Thank you and sleep well.



++++

Assume a Can Opener

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know if you have caught on yet, but I really have no idea what I am doing over here.

I plagiarized my own salon.com post and put it on a new page here in this blog. (“Jobs and Taxes”)  Go read it.  We have been hearing all this talk about how lower taxes creates jobs as if that were all it takes.  That is lazy thinking for a broader nefarious political agenda.  It sounds good, but it isn’t the whole story.  Tax policy alone won’t create jobs, especially in the current economy.  I believe the promoters of this policy know that and the followers supporting it have been duped.

Let me point out again that it is a bad idea … a very bad idea … to get your economic lessons and advice from politicians. I would argue, too, that a second bad choice might be business owners, but I’m already going to have a hard enough time ever getting employed again after maintaining this blog. (May I help you with a little creative orneriness? Can we draw outside the lines?)

I will come back and write something more later.  Right now I want to direct you to my new page:  Jobs and Taxes.  Feel free to join the discussion.

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