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Posts Tagged ‘humor’

  1. 8 Tips for Bloggers, From One Who Knows

    August 23, 2015 by Diane

    hand opening red curtain on white.

    I’m a sucker for reading blogging tips, because:

    1. They distract me from blogging.

    2. They distract me from blogging while educating me on how to make the process easier or more efficient or somehow better for me and the reader and quite possibly the aliens who excavate this blog in the year 5000.

    So when I peeled back the writing curtain of a fellow scribe and discovered Nina Badzin’s post from 2011 titled Blogging Tips: What I Know Now, I eagerly read it.

    Here, paraphrased, is what this now-seasoned blogger thought she knew about blogging when she started out, versus what she discovered a year later.

    #1. She thought she needed a cute or catchy blog name, and now knows: “You don’t.”

    Uh-oh. I’ve got the cute or catchy blog name. But I must admit, I love forcing people to say “squirrels in the doohickey” aloud, especially the folks in technical services when something goes amuck on my server. However, I don’t like having to spell “doohickey,” so she might have a point.

    #2. She thought family and friends would read her blog, and now knows: “They mostly don’t.”

    Boy, is that the truth! Other than my aunt, it appears my family and friends have better things to do than read about the nutty stuff I do when confronted with the stuff that drives me nutty. Which, come to think of it, makes it fair game to blog about them regularly.

    #3. She thought the blog would suck up every minute of writing time, but now knows: “It doesn’t.”

    What!? How is this possible? Well, according to Nina, she posts once a week so she can spend the rest of the week on fiction. I noticed she’s also an advice columnist and contributing writer and essayist and WAIT A MINUTE…how does she find time for all that writing!? I post once a week too, but by the time I’ve drafted a piece in my head, typed it up, revised it fifty times, and realized the revisions are worse than the original draft, I’ve blown a good five hours. I need a time management plan. But who’s got the time?

    #4. She thought her readers would return to her blog to see her response to their comments, but now knows: “Most do not.”

    Since my aunt is the only person leaving a comment, I don’t have this problem. Okay, I’m lying. More people than my aunt leave comments. Three. Okay, I’m downplaying the truth here. There’s five. And two of them are friends, so I lied about that, too, and while I’m coming clean, my pops reads my blog, and comments via telephone. But I digress.

    While I’m digressing…

    I usually get somewhere between 1 and 70 hits on my blog per day. And then, on Friday, August 21, 2015, I had 928. That’s nine hundred and twenty-eight hits! Was this spam? Was this some underpaid computer genius in the Ukraine wasting company time? Or was this one of those five commenters checking back to see if I’d responded to their comments? No, these visitors came from Facebook. I’m not even on Facebook. But someone who is on Facebook and has a ton of followers (or a ton of aunts) ,“liked” my post (the one about introverts wanting to avoid becoming party poopers), and 450 more introverted Facebookers “liked” it, and the whole thing snowballed. And continues to snowball! Now, before you tell me this is a Facebook glitch: don’t. Let me bask in the delusion that 928 people other than my aunt actually read my work on Friday, August 21, 2015. And if you, dear reader, are the fairy godperson who initially started this snowball effect, please announce yourself so I can send you a lifetime supply of gratitude.

    But did any of those 928 people leave comments?

    Uh…no.

    #5. She thought she would be the kind of blogger who offered giveaways, displayed badges, sought ads, etc., but now knows: “I’m not.”

    Okay, I don’t even know what badges are. And giveaways? Of what? Aren’t my demented ramblings enough?

    #6. She wishes she had set up a self-hosted site from the get-go.

    Score! This I did. Self-hosting from the start is a must. I got that tip from Nina Amir (another seasoned blogger), the author of How to Blog a Book.

    So, those are Nina Badzin’s tips. To find out why she knows what she now knows, (or knew), in 2011, here’s a link to the post, which I heartily recommend reading. Leave a comment while you’re there.

    And as a bonus for reading this far, here’s two more tips, from me:

    #7. I thought I needed to come up with a new post every week, but now I know that I can re-purpose somebody else’s post and add my goofy comments. But only with the best intentions and utmost respect and prior permission.

    #8. I thought I wanted readers in the thousands, but now I know that if thousands of readers left comments, all of my free time (which is zero) would be filled trying to respond to each and every one (even though Nina Badzin advises against such madness, and rightly so); still, I would drive myself to respond, all the while yearning for the good ‘ol days when my aunt was the only person who read, and commented on, my blog.

    Feel free to leave a comment about this post. And “like” it. Let’s see if we can top Friday’s numbers!

    Category Behind the Writer's Curtain | Tags: ,,, | 27 Comments

  2. When Small Town USA Meets Silicon Valley

    August 2, 2015 by Diane

    Guy scared by UFO

    Let’s take a guy, say his name is Kurt, a good solid name for a good solid guy, a guy who gets his hands in the dirt, a farmer let’s say, who knows corn and cows and tractors and the feel of American soil in his palms, let’s take this Kurt, who lives in Small Town USA, beam him up from his corn field, whisk him to California, and set him down in the heart of Silicon Valley, in a city called Mountain View.

    What would it look like through his eyes?

    First, Kurt may notice the people. The men wearing designer jeans and untucked button-down shirts, or T-shirts and shorts and sneakers. The women in designer slacks or skirts and button-down blouses, or tank tops and yoga pants. He’ll see that everyone is carrying a Smartphone, or laptop, or electronic tablet, and they’re all texting as they walk. They’re texting as they wait in line at Starbucks and Peets and Philz. They’re texting as they drive.

    But wait, isn’t that illegal?

    Well, see that spinning doohickey on top of the car, Kurt? It’s a self-driving car. It even says so on the side: self-driving car. ‘Ol Kurt has seen similar signs on cars: student driver. But self-driving car? That’s a new one.

    And that woman standing in line, what’s that thingaby that lines up with her right eyeball in front of her glasses? That, dear boy, is known as Google Glass. She’s scanning the internet as she orders her triple shot mocha with extra whip.

    Maybe Kurt takes a stroll down Shoreline Boulevard. He wants to check out the park, built on a dump site. But wait…what’s ahead? What’s that circular contraption motoring down the road? Eight people pedaling a round bicycle. They’re all chatting with each other. Why, it’s a team from Google having a meeting as they bike to the park.

    Kurt isn’t so small town that he hasn’t heard of Google. And maybe, by some miracle, he’s allowed onto the campus, which is a short jog off Shoreline, and he’s escorted through one of the buildings. He’ll see more people on Smartphones and laptops and electronic tablets. He’ll see the shelves of free snack foods, and the secretive conversations going on which he won’t be privy to, because those engaged will cease all communication the minute he’s within earshot. He’ll see Google umbrellas (although it never rains over the land of Google), and Google bicycles and Google lounge chairs around a Google lake, and if he uses the restroom he can’t fail to notice the heated toilet seat, which will probably make him jump up and look back with some sort of exclamation, like, “what the…?”

    Let’s say that Kurt hops onto a Google bicycle with the assumption that it’s available for a visiting farmer to borrow, and pedals up the peninsula to Palo Alto because he’s fit, this manual laborer, he doesn’t slouch in front of a computer ten hours a day. Outside of Max’s Smoke Shop he ditches the two-wheeler, and strolls up and down University Avenue, past the space-age Apple store with its glass ceiling, past the restaurants that seat people on the sidewalk and serve them teensy-weensy hamburgers that would fit nicely at a child’s tea party. He stops to study a map that he pulls from his back pocket, and hears a voice say, “hello.”

    Up he looks, to find he’s standing next to a TV screen mounted on two metal poles on wheels, and on that screen, a friendly face, a young man, smiling. Thinking it’s some sort of recorded program, Kurt says the first thing that pops into his startled brain: “You’re weird.” Then holds his breath, blinking, watching the face to see if it will respond.

    And it does!

    “That’s not nice,” it scolds. “I’m human, after all.”

    And the thing starts rolling toward Kurt, the thing with the talking face, and the two others next to it, so that Kurt is surrounded by robots. And one of those other faces is female, who clucks her tongue. “Don’t be mean to Matt.” And Kurt glances at the third face, another female, who is looking down. Texting, most likely.

    Has Kurt landed in the future?

    No.

    It’s just a typical day in the valley of silicon.

    Don’t believe me?

    Check out this.

    And this.

    And this.

    And oh yeah, this.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: , | 14 Comments

  3. Some Might Think You’re A Hypochondriac When…

    June 21, 2015 by Diane

    Shelf with books

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac when you’re abnormally anxious about your health. But when does normal anxiety about one’s health become abnormal?

    A case in point…

    I became concerned about my cortisol levels. All of those adrenaline surges I’d suffered night after night after night had battered my adrenal glands to the point where they were shooting out cortisol like water from a busted fire hydrant. So obviously I needed to reset my adrenals, right?

    There’s a book on how to do that very thing.

    This book was written by a doctor who was on the Dr. Oz show. Not that I watch the Dr. Oz show (although if I was a hypochondriac, tuning in daily would be a tell-tale symptom). No, my mother watches the show, or she watched it this once—when the adrenal reset expert was on—and she recorded it and called me that evening and replayed the whole thing, repeating everything the doctor said about resetting your cortisol levels, which was this:

    “For breakfast, eat raw oats with berries, nuts and coconut milk.”

    I already did!

    So why was I still having those adrenaline surges?

    I looked up this expert online, and got his book, and in the book he clearly states the opposite: that it’s pure protein you should eat for breakfast, meaning MEAT, not carbs. Which is downright confusing! And I told him so in an email.

    Hey, on the Dr. Oz show you said to eat oats for breakfast, but in your book you said…

    Someone in his office emailed back, and gave me this explanation: there wasn’t much to choose from on the Dr. Oz set, so we went with what was available.

    Huh?

    Just who is this doctor?

    Dr. Christianson.

    Yeah, Dr. Christianson! That’s who.

    But I digress.

    In between adrenaline surges, I like to sleep with my left arm flung overhead. The result? When I wake up in the morning it’s numb, which in my book is a clear symptom of a heart attack. Is this the thought process of a hypochondriac? I think not. After all, my arm has gone numb many a time. For instance: one afternoon I set my laptop on the ironing board and stood and typed for an hour, my shoulders pressed into my earlobes, and sure enough, my left arm went numb. Now if that isn’t the start of a cardiovascular incident, I don’t know what is, right? Furthermore, if I was a hypochondriac–which I’m not–I might have called Dr. Oz himself, or even Dr. Christianson, for advice. If I had their numbers. But I didn’t. So I called the next best expert: my mother.

    “Um, my left arm is kinda numb, and it’s bugging me.”

    I was taking a walk when I called her, so it’s unlikely that I was having a cardiovascular incident, which her rational mind pointed out to me. Still, you can never be too sure.

    Now, some people might think that makes me a hypochondriac. And if they’ve read my blog, they might also think that I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and insomnia (NO-ZZZ), all of which add up to an obvious case of Squirrels in the Doohickey (SITD).

    But is my concern abnormal?

    Oh, sure, I’m not above asking people if I can poke around their stomach to see if it feels like mine, since mine feels like a mine-field.

    “That’s your vertebrae you’re feeling,” my doctor claims.

    “That hard knot?”

    “It’s your spine.”

    “Through my stomach?”

    “You’re thin.”

    “Here…that thing?”

    “Yes.”

    “Can I feel yours?”

    I’m not above asking my boyfriend to offer his abdomen to my probing fingers.

    “Can I…”

    “Oh for God’s sake…”

    And with an audible sigh he’ll roll onto his back and offer his belly, like a dog does, but not as happily, and I’ll knead away, like a cat does, but not as peacefully, and his belly, every time, feels soft and warm and pliant and not at all like mine.

    Now I ask you…does that make me a hypochondriac? Or you, for that matter–if you found yourself nodding with recognition?

    Some might think so.

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because you have the urge to feel a stranger’s carotid artery in the elevator after surreptitiously feeling the odd shape of your own. “Excuse me…”

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because you count the number of coughs you have in one day (throat clearings don’t count), and by two o’clock in the afternoon you’re up to fifty and wonder if you’re being a tab obsessive.

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because one whole bookshelf in your bedroom is filled with medical tomes. Especially if it’s a paramedic looking at that shelf (the night you end up going to the hospital wearing your own pajamas and come home wearing someone else’s), and as he scans that row of medical titles, his eyes flash a warning to his buddy that says, “uh-oh, hypochondriac,” ….well, I’m here to tell you one thing: don’t believe it.

    Not for a second.

    Because in my mind…

    (that is, if we’re really talking about you in this scenario, and not me),

    …in my mind you’re perfectly normal.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

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