Desiderata for bloggers

Said to have been discovered in a Baltimore church cellar in 1692, actually penned in 1927 and cranked out decades later on fake parchment to adorn the bedroom walls of millions of kids like me who came of age in the seventies, Desiderata is a modern junk classic, its bite-sized peace ‘n’ love wisdom wedges one of the last twitches of a sixties generation that had already begun to trade its tie-dyed shirts and cut-offs for leisure suits and MBAs. With bloggers having cut themselves off into their own little world so far they even rate their very own health tips, comes a new Desiderata.

For Bloggers only.

Stumble aimlessly amid the trolls and waste, but remember what peace there be in staring at your toes for a couple of weeks. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all readers. Publish your posts quietly and clearly, and listen to podcasts, even the dull and garbled, for they too have a right to hog bandwidth. Avoid loud and aggressive bloggers. They are pains in the ass.

If you compare your hit count to that of other bloggers, you will become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser counts than yours can muster. Enjoy your favourite posts as well as your drafts. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, for you will probably never make so much as a fucking dime from blogging.

Exercise caution in choosing a provider, for the Internet is full of con artists and thieves. But let this not blind you to the virtues of moving your blog to WordPress.com. Many strive for massive hit counts, and everywhere life is full of miracles. Be yourself. Above all, do not feign knowledge, for readers will not hesitate to tell you that you are full of shit. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all the scrapers, sploggers, and bloggers who never learned the difference between it’s and its and loose and lose, it is perennial as come-ons for Viagra.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in the face of sudden loss of access. But do not distress yourself with thoughts your blog has been deleted permanently. Many fears are born of insomnia and lack of caffeine. Beyond a wholesome wheat toast, eat whatever you like. You are a child of your parents. You have a right to post, and to sometimes state the obvious. And whether or not it is clear to you why or how, no doubt the search engines are making sure that someone looking for porn will land at your blog instead.

Therefore, be at peace with Google, whatever your level of search optimisation may be. And whatever your postings midst the noisy confusion of millions of other bloggers, keep peace with your soul. For all its spam, viruses and broken links, it is still a functional network.

Brush after meals. Strive to post regularly.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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Facebook lifehack: how to get back in touch

In the few weeks I’ve been on Facebook I have gone from grudgingly giving in to family members who’d been bugging me to sign up, to enthusiastically searching for nearly everyone who’s ever been part of my life at some point. Former classmates, distant cousins, ex-girlfriends - I’ve found many, and already contacted a few.

But I had a bit of trouble writing the first contact messages. I quickly realised that just because I had a hard time thinking of anything witty or meaningful to say after two decades or more without contact didn’t mean I could just give in, poke everybody, sit back and hope for the best. You want the recipients to open the message and feel they’ve been graced with something special.

So if there is already a heap of advice out there on everything from tying your fucking shoelaces to planning your career, I figure it’s time to post a little help on how to get in touch again.

Delete where appropriate.

The school buddy

Hey, I saw you on Facebook! / How’s it going? / Don’t you wish you had set your privacy a lot higher?

My how / time flies. / it seems only yesterday we were shoplifting at Safeway to survive. / you’ve lost a lot of hair.

It seems so long since / graduation. / that time out behind the shed after football practice. / your unfortunate lobotomy.

Remember how we hated each other’s guts after only two/ four/ six weeks as roommates?

Did you ever fulfill those dreams of / stardom? / making a lot of money? / curing your chronic halitosis?

My life has always been / one success after the other. / probably no less miserable than yours. / one step away from the gutter.

Tell me how / your life has gone. / you’ve managed to survive in the real world despite such a low IQ.

Would you like to / be my friend on Facebook? / block me? / report me to the authorities?

The former colleague

Hi! I saw you on Facebook? How’s it going?

Are you / still with Rapkapple, Birthwaite, Aftermath, Plumsteel, Spoondiddler & Prattz? / still an ass-kisser? / getting out of jail soon?

Remember how we / used to call in sick all the time and go skiing? / stabbed Taylor in the back? / amassed that fortune siphoning off client funds?

Damn, those were the /days, my friend. / happiest times of my life. /most annoying weasels I’ve ever had the misfortune of being professionally associated with.

I’ve still / got a great tan. / not spent half of it. / got another five years before I come up for parole.

The ex-girlfriend

Hi! I / saw you / stumbled upon your picture completely by accident / am stalking you / on Facebook!

How long has it been since we / were going out? /split up? / auctioned off that toddler on eBay?

You still / look good. / make my heart flutter. / have that funny wart thing on your nose. / make me want to go back on Prozac.

Since we split up, my life has been / a chaotic series of lurches from one crisis to another. / not worth living. / a happy romp through daisies.

Are you still /plagued with body odour?/ dead in bed? / going out with that loser you dumped me for?

I am / friends with Bill Clinton. / about to make my second billion. / going to move three blocks away from you under an assumed name and there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.

Don’t you wish we were / still together? / still together? / still together?

I’ve taken the liberty of / leaving my contact details for you. / sending your contact details to every spammer and Nigerian scam artist I’ve been able to find on Google. / telling the police where you hid all those bodies.

I Googled your name when I was bored one day. Are you aware that / your name is associated with a severe personality disorder? / your boyfriend’s wanted by Interpol? / your image is featured at several porn sites?

The distant relative

Hi! Isn’t Facebook / great? / fantastic? / an enormous waste of time?

Remember that time when we were kids at Auntie Jenny’s place and you / fell off the swings, beat the crap out of me and then drowned my kitten? / ate a bowl of lima beans, turned in my direction and threw up in my lap? /wrote FUCK in big black crayon on the bathroom wall, and when my Dad found it, you pointed at me and said I did it?

Well that was a long time ago. I / forgive you. / still only harbour a bit of a grudge. / won’t tell anyone how you really came to lose your left eye.

Will you be my friend on Facebook? Please? I only have / five, each one an alternate personality. / 27, but I had to pay 50 bucks to each of them. / a few months left to live now that the tests are in, and I’d like to get into at least double-digits.

See you on / Facebook! / Arsebook! / Crackbook!

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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My five writing strengths. A meme.

Charlotte is right. This is a scary thing to write. Self-deprecation and playing up shortcomings come far too easily, but point out my strengths one-by-one and I not only feel I’m going to be labeled a braggart, I leave myself open to being shown examples to the contrary that just might be sprinkled throughout this blog. Oh well. Good excuse for you to look through it, eh?

1. I can spell. I don’t just spot mistakes in newspapers and novels, if a word is spelled incorrectly it will leap off the page and shake me by the throat. Thank-you, Mrs. Fairburn. Who was Mrs. Fairburn? My Grade One teacher, 1966 - 67. She taught us phonics, one of the last primary school teachers of her generation to do so before it became unfashionable. Can’t spell a word? Sound it out. Doesn’t follow the rule? Learn the exception. They say wordpress.com has a spell-checker, but I’ve never bothered to use it because to me words have to feel as well as look right. Somehow this skill has spilled over to French and German, the two other languages I have learned to speak and write fluently. (Charlotte, I am NOT used to this. Can’t I put in something negative to even things out?)

2. I used to report for a newspaper for nearly no money while doing the job of three people. I quickly learned that no matter how much work they gave me, I always had enough time to write what I wanted to. The tighter the deadline, the better the piece. I learned to love writing under pressure and some of my best clippings came when I was told an hour before press time that it was my turn to do the editorial. Knowing there was beer and poutine after the post-mortem helped.

3. The flip side is that unless I’m told I have an incurable disease and will be breakfast for worms within an exact amount of time, I will never even attempt to write either of the two novels rattling around my skull. Hey, something negative. I knew I could slip that in.

4. My writing is clear, lean, down-to-earth and to the point. Maybe it comes from writing for radio and television, but I’ve learned to write what I want to say and move on to the next. In broadcasting, the listener has only one chance to catch what you mean. If you’re wordy, vague, use passive voice or flowery adjectives, he’s switching back to JR-Country.

5. I don’t pretend to be a comedian, but if I put my mind to it I can turn anything into a laugh, if not for others then at least for myself. I don’t sit there and admire a piece for days, but if I start to giggle when I go over something I’ve just written, then I’ve succeeded in doing with my writing what a pianist does at his keyboard with no-one else to hear. Enjoy. Why do anything you like to do, if not for that?

© 2007 lettershometoyou

How uncool am I? Let me count the ways.

OK, full disclosure right off the bat: this is a direct rip-off from inspired by Alex Beam’s column in today’s International Herald Tribune, that NY Times of Europe newsthingy some say won’t be around in a few years because it’s made of paper, and paper is just so…uncool.

As I was reading his column I thought: separated at birth or joined at the demographic? Because my good Mr. Beam, we could be brothers.

How uncool am I? Let me count the ways.

1. Until a few months ago, I used to think Bluetooth was a disease and BluRay a sea creature.

2. A blackberry belongs in a bucket.

3. A treo is a misspelling.

4. I don’t own an iPhone, but I do have an iPod Mini. The blue one Borat says is for girls.

5. My organiser is made of paper. I input with a pen.

6. My cell phone is nearly as old as my 10-year-old kid, who calls me Daddy, not Ian.

7. Text messages are a pain in the ass.

8. Skype is for people who can’t find their phone.

9. MySpace should come with a health warning.

10. My profile on Facebook is set to: Block the World

11. Our TV is square, and bulges out the back. We don’t have a TiVo, a Slingbox, Pay TV, Satellite or Video on demand.

12. I’ve never downloaded music or movies.

13. The last CD I bought was in 2004.

14. If I want to watch a movie or listen to new music, I take it out of the library or go to the local video rental shop.

15. I’ve never seen The Sopranos.

16. I don’t own a car.

17. I get around everywhere by bicycle.

18. I don’t have a tattoo. I have no piercings.

19. I like living in Germany.

20. I think expatriates who bitch about life here should vote with their feet.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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