Well…last week the show DIDN’T go on. Someone hit a tree down the road an hour before showtime, and my internet went down with the tree…so this is two weeks at once.
Enjoy…and when you travel…leave your Les Paul and antique Steinway at home.
[powerpress]
I am getting ready to blast someone I actually like…and it almost hurts me. This person has been very good to me, and given words of encouragement a time or few. However, last night, he Tweeted something out that just made me see red. He’s generally a decent guy, but without context the tweet was just plain idiotic.
He is a Digital Emperor, and has a lot of awesome things going for him. He’s just released his first Iphone app. He’s got a great music service going and he has a blog. Yup, he’s a blogger and much more. Something I am striving to be. Let’s take a look at the tweet, then I will say why it peeved me off.
I don’t need another blog to read…what I need is another “doer of great shit” that I can admire.
Nathan Hangen
nhangen
As I said, I like Nathan. I can also see his point. However, without context, the comment seems to indicate he thinks he is above reading “new to him” blogs. May or may not be true. If I were a new follower who was embarking on my adventure in blogging, that would make me wonder if I was doing the right thing. It would upset me that someone I admired might never look at my blog until I got to the big time..if that was my aim and I got there.
Yes, we could use more people doing great things. Yet we all have to start somewhere. Nathan him self started out writing articles for a paltry sum each in order to fund his business start up while he was in Afghanistan as a member of the US Military. His story is inspiring to say the least.
However, just because you’ve “made it” does not mean you can say or do anything you want! We should think of others and help them. Nathan is great for helping those who cross his radar. However, I think he should have thought a moment before posting the tweet in question. If someone like me, who admires and respects him, found that post off putting…imagine a newbie bloggers reaction. Especially with all the talk of the blogosphere being saturated! In this case, I think he could have done a lot more harm than good.
Here’s the kicker for me…I doubt he will care. He spoke his mind and will stand by it. The two of us and some others were in an almost heated discussion on another blog…and he came off as very narcissistic to some of us. There are times it seems Nathan has a hard time seeing others points of view. I sometimes wonder if the nice guy or the asshole is the real Nathan Hangen. The jury is still out for me on that one for now.
I know that one of the reasons his comment hit me hard is that I am working on becoming a do’er of great things. My start on that is building a great blog, and then moving on to great products. It’s going to take time, so I am depending on others to want another blog to read as I move up to a doer of great things. A LOT of people use this model these days. It would be easier to do it the other way around, but this is the most cost efficient way for me. And it pisses me off when it seems someone is knocking what I do. Most especially when they are doing the same darned thing.
So here’s my points for the day:
I don’t know about you but I’m fed up with Search Engine Optimization, Page Rank and kowtowing to the great god Google. What do they want from me? What do they want from the world and can anything stop them?
Google says their mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Did you ever hear anything more like big brother in your life? Even Obama hasn’t suggested doing this as he eliminates the private sector economy. And these clever people at Google have figured out how to make us pay for it without thinking unlike those clumsy and ineffective taxes the government uses to get our money.
But back to the SEO. Have you read the helpful instructions you can find everywhere on the web about how to make Google happy? Even if you read them, do you have a clue about what Google really wants? You hear all the time that if you create high quality content, the web is a piece of cake but when you begin to study SEO you learn that it is bull crap because Google can’t read and wouldn’t know good writing from from the typing of 10,000 monkeys. If you write good copy but fail to appease the god Google, nobody will ever find you, read you and appreciate your effort. Why bother?
To make Google happy, don’t waste your time refining your prose because writing is old fashioned and irrelevant. Nobody cares because thanks to Google, nobody will know that it even exists. If you want to be successful you have to pack your collection of words (why even call it writing?) with a word or phrase that somebody might search for. Salt enough of those keywords throughout your word aggregation and Google will send you readers. No muss, no fuss and best of all, no tedious writing effort. Anything will do.
Google has spawned a whole new industry of products and services to help witless people with more money than they can spend to propagate their word aggregations around the web to provide ‘credibility’ (in the form of back links) to your aggregations. Put those mutated word aggregations in enough places and rearrange their words in enough ways and Google will reward you with a higher page rank. Just like the annoying TV ads that finally get etched into your brain and make you mindlessly grab the products when you shop, if you saturate the web with your word aggregations, you overwhelm the competition and achieve value to Google. After all nothing else matters any more. And all it took was a few hundred dollars and some software.
So today I say to Google, ‘Do no harm’. If Google can’t read and won’t even try to learn, then stop pretending that Google knows how to find value and content. Call a spade a spade. Google isn’t about writing or content – unless you value keywords. I can’t get too excited about them but then, I’m a Coot. They are probably all that Tweet- addled Gens X and Y can handle. Google doesn’t care a rat’s ass for writing. What Google loves is picture frames for keywords.
Do you see what I have been reduced to this week? I am actually going to write a rant about another rant. My brain is getting soft this week, maybe I need to split up the podcasts.
So, the other day I was sent a link to this rant that I have reproduced below. The audio is not very good, it is not your speakers. The day that I received this link I didn’t have time to watch it right away. But I thought, hey, it’s a Bill Murray Rant it has to be good right?
I finally got around to watching it and was sorely disappointed. Not only was it an extremely poor rant, it was way to scripted and poorly acted. Not what I expected from a Bill Murray rant.
In fact, it was so bad that I had to go listen to my Denis Leary CD just to get my ears burning with a good rant or two.
What is the point and why would you want to watch this clip now? Well I don’t have a good answer for that. I think it is a case of an actor who can really deliver some lines in movies gets pegged to try stand up. And then doesn’t write it himself. There is just no soul to it. I don’t blame Bill Murray, I blame whoever wrote this piece of garbage.
I only agree with the line about R2D2 being a fine actor. Can’t go wrong with a Star Wars reference. Here is a tip from me to you, completely free but still a part of the Cantankerous Old Coots University. If you are going to rant on something, it had better sound real. You can write it out and memorize it but when you deliver it, it should sound like you are extemporizing and not like you are reading the phone book.
Check out Bill Hicks, Denis Leary, George Carlin and old Dennis Miller for how to do it right. If you are really adventurous, Sam Kinison awaits you.
Send in your questions for Ask A Coot Saturday and have a great weekend.
-Justin
Any member of the House of Representatives that hasn’t brought up a bill of impeachment against Obama…which meant ALL of them…is guilty of at least misfeasance, if not malfeasance of office.
Any prosecutor who has not brought charges of treason against Obama…which means ALL of them…is guilty of the same.
And that malfeasance, or misfeasance, has now resulted in four dead United States embassy personnel in Lybia.
It gets even worse. As the plane carrying the four bodies of those dead citizens was landing at Andrews Air Force Base, another plane was taking off. Air Force Continue reading »