Fare Thee Well, Yahoo! Forever

A few blog posts ago, I mentioned that I’d stopped contributing to the Yahoo! Contributor Network (YCN). Today, I asked to have my account with YCN permanently closed. If you’re wondering what the fastest way to get your account closed is, it’s the classic, over-the-top forum flounce-and-bounce. Mine included cursing, frustration, and accusations.

Basically, all the things I predicted two years ago when Yahoo! bought Associated Content have come true. Yahoo! has a terrible track record when it comes to acquiring companies. They are so poorly managed and suffer from a focused mission. They are the uncoordinated octupus of the internet, grabbing what they can, and killing it without a thought but to their accounting ledgers. So it has been with Associated Content.

Yahoo! has laid off hundreds of people including many in the division running YCN. Those left are so terrified of being fired, they’ll do anything to keep their jobs. It’s sickening. It leaves YCN staffed by frightened, little infants who don’t even know their own rules and regulations.

Their uneven enforcement of their publishing agreement is what has me most upset. They have been closing accounts and dismissing submissions over the stupidest things. Most of their reasoning is contradictory. Their fear has to become everyone’s fear because shit always rolls downhill. Well, I’ve finally had enough. I don’t want to be associated with such a company.

I believe the ten minutes my forum post lasted set a new record for post-to-deletion-by-a-moderator. If you’re going to go, go big, burn all the bridges, stampede the women and children, and rape the cattle. That’s what my post (captured below) did. My account was gone within 15 minutes of posting.

Goodbye, Yahoo! I can’t say, “It’s been fun,” because with mindless, corporate dickheads at the helm, it hasn’t been fun at all. I have all my original material that I care about and I will do with it as I please. Yahoo! can try to sue me, but they can suck my dick, too.

The fastest way to get your Yahoo! Contributor account closed.

As Promised: The Odd, Little Happy Blooms

I actually did get up off my butt today, long enough to weed the flower beds and snap a few pictures. Up first, the petunias beneath the dogwood tree. Note the weeper hose. This is my poor-man’s irrigation system. Sprinklers are so very wasteful due to evaporation. I’ve outfitted my beds with weeper hoses and tried to bury the hose as much as possible.	Petunias under the dogwood tree More petunias under the dogwood tree
Here’s is the newly planted bed around the underground utility markers. Again, note the weeper hose. In the bottom picture, those are Stonecap (sedum) ground cover plants. I had to move them from the front to the back because I couldn’t find more on this trip to Lowe’s.	New flower bed is new New flower bed is new, too.
I had to buy a new hose caddy and hoses to set this up, but it will save me many hours of moving hoses around the yard. It will also save plenty of money in water bills because I can water these newbies with half what a sprinkler would use. Flowers got to drink, too.	New hose caddy is new
Getting this bed around the utilities was a challenge. First, there are wires under it. The last thing I wanted to do was kill me, the power, and the cable. Second, there was a hideous cedar ground cover in the corner. I very carefully removed it. I then put in almost a cubic yard of fresh soil so the new plants had something to take root in without digging into those utility lines. I also realigned the rock border. Those are granite stones and none of them are light. I couldn’t find more of the same Stonecap (sedum) that I started to plant as a ground cover slash border. That’s Blue Star Creeper along the front. Hopefully, it will grow over the rocks and make a nice, flowing border. The remains of the cedar bush lie unceremoniously on the storm drain. A fitting fate for such an ugly plant.	Die cedar, die!
Last, but not least, is the bed by the house. I wrote about making this a couple of years ago. I never did get that rain barrel. What happened to that begonia in the front? I don’t know. Sometimes, Mother Nature is a bitch.	Begonias and potted petunias

So that’s it. Flower tour 2012. My only regret is seeing some beautiful, iridescent Impatiens at Lowe’s, but they like shade and my new bed gets lots of sun.

Surprise! The Plain, Brown, Odd, Little Happy

When I arrived home from work, waiting on my doorstep was a large, craft-paper-covered package. I was expecting the box, but had no idea what wonders where taped inside. Apparently, a writing buddy has a new toy, a skill saw, and she’s gone mad making anything her fertile brain can dream up. She used the excuse of my up-coming 30th wedding anniversary to make a couple of gifts. She admits in her letter accompanying the gifts that once the gift is in hand, she has difficulty waiting for the occasion and she’s a bit early for the July 2^nd date.

But there I go, looking a beautiful gift horse in the mouth. If her mother hadn’t named her Angel, she would have earn the title with her winning outlook and giving spirit. Angel Sharum of the Circle 8 Writers group not only types a mean story, she wields a mean blade with her new saw. Knowing how much my wife and I love our dogs, she carved a floppy-eared dog into a plaque reading “Warning Bark Zone.” If that wasn’t enough, she carved a beautiful, scroll-worked mount where she embedded a watch resulting in a darling little mantle clock.

I don’t know what we did to deserve such thoughtful gifts, but my wife and I are loving them. I’m grateful to have such good friends-I’ve-never-met. The net is a wild place, but if you always remember there are real people on the other end of that connection, you can make real connections with them. Today’s odd, little happy came in a plain, brown wrapper from the hands of an angel.

Warning Bark Zone

Mantle Clock

When is an Annual not an Annual?

If you’ve read me for any length of time, you probably know I like to garden a little. I enjoy digging in the dirt, planting flowers, watching them grow, and pointing at them to say, “I did that.” It’s quite satisfying. Something gardening will teach you is Mother Nature has a mind of her own and she tends to change it on a whim. The rules that applied last season may not apply this season. Mother Nature’s fickleness can be frustrating, but can also be an odd, little happy moment. The case in point, Forget-me-nots.

I’ve experimented with several plants and flowers to see what will survive and flourish in my soil and to see what adds ascetic value here or there. I usually choose annuals because if they don’t work out, they’re easily replaced next season. Last season I threw in some Forget-me-nots directly under the front bedroom window. Their height was perfect for their placement in the front bed. They also enjoyed prime watering treatment from the faucet that leaks a little. The Forget-me-nots drank right along with what ever else was getting watered at the time. Ironically, this season, I totally forgot about the Forget-me-nots, but Mother Nature had an odd, little happy to throw my way.

Though they are annuals and should have been gone this year, as soon as the temperature allowed, up came a jungle of entangled green, right where the Forget-me-nots were last year. Momma N. decided they needn’t be annuals. She wanted them to forget they were supposed to die off and instead, wanted them to act like perennials. That entangled mass of green now has lovely pink clusters crowning the stems.

Today’s post isn’t earth-shattering, but the odd, little happy seldom is. Most often, it is simply a moment in life where you remember to stop and smell the flowers, in this case, literally. Not having to plant under that window this season didn’t save me tons of money. It would have been no bother to plant something new there, but seeing those Forget-me-nots return when they were expected to die, was an unpretentious moment of odd, little happiness.

I’ve found that if you hunt the odd, little happy, it will elude you. You can’t force it to appear any more than you can turn an annual into a perennial. It must happen on its own and just be. The best we can do is to be open to it, to attune our mind and attitude to recognize it when it happens. The odd, little happy is happening all around us, all the time. We miss seeing it for a hundred different reasons. I challenge you to open yourself up to it. Start by thinking back over the last couple of weeks. What was the odd, little happy you saw or, now that you think about it, you missed? There’s a comment section below. I’d love to read what odd, little happy you remembered.

Good Writer. Bad Author. “Wil Right for Foode.”

Part of my new awakening and journey of self-discovery (translated: now that I don’t get paid to write, who the hell am I?), is coming to grips with the fact that I’m a good writer, but I’m a bad author. When I say, “I’m a good writer,” it’s not just me stroking my ego. I can write. I can write well. I write better than most and have independent verification on this point. Yeah, my commas aren’t always in the right places and homonyms still trip me up, but I have a good imagination, sense of rhythm with the English language, and a writing style wholly mine, yet accessible to a wide variety of readers. Still, I’m the most sorry excuse for an author on the planet save the homeless guy who misspelled “Wil Werk for Foode” on his cardboard sign.

What exactly is the difference in a writer and an author? The answer is more simple than you might think. In a couple of sentences: writers write for any number of reasons. Authors are dedicated professionals who maintain a schedule of writing, querying, editing, publishing, promoting, and banking.

Writers can write anything, any time, anywhere, regardless of marketplace demands, editor’s requests, or reader’s desires. Writers can write as a hobby and still be mighty, fine writers. Writer’s can write with wild abandon. Writers don’t have to depend on their words for food. A simple writer such as this, am I. I have a day job to keep the lights on. Luckily, I like my day job and getting paid to do something you like isn’t a bad hand to be dealt in life.

Authors must be all of the above and have a head for business. Authors approach writing as a job. They schedule writing time and balance it with market research. They are constantly juggling multiple balls. They have a constant stream of queries in circulation. Sometimes, they write what they don’t like simply to get paid and have time to write what they want. They acquiesce to editor’s demands so the checks will get signed. They do all a writer does and they go to the bank with a decent paycheck. It’s when being a writer (something you love) intersects with being an author (the job) that you have a content, possibly happy, individual.

You can be writer, without being an author. I’ve proven that. You can even be an author without being a good writer. You need only pick up a Dan Brown novel for 50¢ at a garage sale to know that. Happily for the readers of the world, most authors tend to be good writers. It is when doing what they like and getting paid for it, we get to enjoy the writer-author’s best work.

So, I’m a terrible author and I’m okay with that. I’m still a good writer. At this point in my life, I’m fine with that. I do what I love and love what I do, all while chasing the odd, little happy. Take a stare in the mirror and tell me, which are you? Are you a writer, author, both or duck-billed platypus?

365 Days Later

Where were you this time last year? Me? I was at work with tornadoes bearing down on both my office and my home. The worst part was being cut off from my family. As soon as the first wave of tornadoes passed, I rushed home, dodging fallen trees, to be with the people I love. If it’s going to be the end of the world, I want to go surrounded by people who love me.

After two more tornadoes blew through the area, we emerged from our barely-safe room and found:

• Strangely, our house was spared any damage. Clean living?
• Many of my neighbors have chainsaws and are willing to share.
• We had no electricity. Thousands had no electricity and would not have any for 6 days.
• Hundreds of homes and business were gone, simply gone.
• 220 fellow citizens of Alabama had perished in the onslaught.

My wife, who doesn’t get out of the house much, met our next-door neighbor after the first blast. They simultaneously emerged to inspect the damage. With barely a word, they just hugged each other in a embrace that said, “I’m glad we’re both alive!” You don’t know how much you value life until you’re faced with losing it. You don’t know how much you truly love your family until faced with really losing them.

For the next six electricity-free days, we boiled water on an open grill; made coffee in a French press; cooked all the food we had; shared it with the neighbors. We got to know each other a little better without the distractions of the modern world. We huddled around a radio for news. We played board-games. We talked. Most of all we discovered we could pull together in a crisis and survive. All that and we learned that after 6 days with no hot water, we can get pretty stinky and not really care. However, I will never take a hot shower for granted again.

People I know and work with, lost their homes. One lost her son. There’s no coming back from devastation like that. We were lucky. We only lost a few days of the daily grind and gained something much more precious. The knowledge that we are not alone in this world.

That is probably the only thing we really need in this life: to not be alone. I’m lucky to not be alone and think to myself daily, “There, but by the grace of God, go I.” So many lost loved-ones and will forever be alone without them. It’s so strange that within a few minutes a funnel of wind can scoop a hole right out of the middle of our lives.

That’s where I was 365 days ago. That’s where I am today. Where are you?

Some video I shot of my neighborhood on that fateful day.

Link for the embed impaired.

War. What is it Good for?

Today on Twitter, I was privileged to see this quote: “Wars are not won because of hatred for the enemy. They are won because of love for what is being defended.” from @Jennichad217. The quote is originally from “The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter III” by Jennifer Malone Wright whose Twitter handle that is.

There is a ring of truth in that, but there’s a knot of instant reaction in my gut that leaves a sour taste in my mouth about it, too. See, I’ve had long, detailed discussions with a professional, career Army officer who has a very, very different opinion about what war is. When you’re the one asked to point the gun at other human beings, you develop a different perspective.

When you’re “in the shit” ideology doesn’t matter. That just cause that propelled you to defend your tribe is lost. The high ideals debated in some distant Capitol are empty rhetoric. When you and your buddies are faced with the choice of imminent death or murder, you think of only one thing: survival.

I knew that old Army man very well. He was my father. I knew his core ideals. I knew he was a man of peace and it confused me why he chose the military as a career. So I had to ask him and the answer he gave me defined my perception of the military and military personnel for the rest of my life. He explained that the people asked to carry the guns are absolutely the very last people who want war. He said, “The reason for a military is to prepare for a war that you never have to fight.”

When yours is the life in immediate danger, the human response is to survive, to fight, to live. However, if we live life to the fullest first, we truly don’t fear death. If the ideals you are defending are the core of your soul, you have no need to fight. Gandhi proved that pretty well. So did my dad. They approached it from different angles, but achieved the same outcome.

Wars are won by not being fought. No, I won’t let someone take what is mine or hurt my loved ones, but they will know well before they try that I’m willing to escalate the incident to mutually assured destruction and that is usually enough avoid the altercation.

Sun Tzu wrote “All war is deception.” Whether he meant the actual tactics of conflict or the events that lead up to a conflict, I’ll let you decide. I’ll believe the latter. Life is like a big Poker game. Sometimes you bluff. Sometimes you go all in. In either case, you win not by conflict, but by making your opponent believe they will lose.

Man, I miss that old Warrant Officer.

theBarefoot 2.0

With my last blog post, I bid my official farewell to Yahoo. I haven’t been active there lately anyway, so it wasn’t a hard decision at this point. So where do I go after publishing for six years at their site? I don’t know, but I know I don’t care. It’s a big, big world and a brand new day. It’s theBarefoot 2.0 as far as my writing goes.

I know these few things. I’ll be writing here on the blog more frequently. I’ll be listening to more music, more loudly, through my new headphones. I’ll still be posting YouTube videos at I Eat Lemons. Most importantly, I’ll be giving some serious attention to writing off-line. I’ve got a book started. It may end up in the trash, but not before I finish it. I’ve made that promise to myself.

Today, I shot two videos. It was a very nostalgic experience because I shot them outside just like when I started posting videos on YouTube. I was feeling so nostalgic, I dug out the old “Nancy Intro/Outro” for one of them.

How Southern Are You? is a response to a graphic that’s making the rounds on the internet. It’s wrong. I set it right. Friday the 13th, the Universe, and You is a bit more philosophical and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Change is here. Change is always here. Change is good. I embrace change and revel in the new while loving the old. I hope you stick around for the changes. You’ll probably catch me with my pants down a time or two, but that happens when you’re changing.

A Difficult Decision: Six Years Later, It’s Time to Change

Friends, readers, and accidental internet tourists,

It is with a heavy heart and sober mind, I make the following official and permanent. I will no longer publish articles with the Yahoo network. My six-year body of work will remain available at my old account and I will continue to write and publish mainly here on the old blog.

There were many factors weighed before coming to this conclusion. This in not a decision that was rushed. It started back in May 2010 when Yahoo bought Associated Content (AC). The assimilation of the old AC into the Yahoo network took from then until now and was done in incremental steps. The changes along the way made Yahoo a site that no longer fits my publishing needs. We have grown apart.

Associated Content was a platform where any writer, with anything to say, could publish their work in a supportive environment. Yahoo changed that. They are interested solely in work that aligns with advertisements. It’s a simple case of following the money trail.

My writing was never about ad-alignment. The type of articles I write are either too introspective to find ads to fit them or are humor/satire for which Yahoo has no appreciation. Frankly, AC had no interest in them either, at least not from a monitization aspect, but AC tolerated them and provided a easily accessible platform with good exposure. In my opinion, Yahoo has reverted to site with such tight controls, there is just no sense in my continued use of their platform.

Other changes are just plain annoying. For example, the ability to instantly publish an article for which I was requesting no up-front payment was a bonus with AC. Yahoo is requiring all articles, regardless of payment terms, to go through their “editorial” review process unless you go through some bizarre qualification process of obtaining a certain rank within their contributing masses. I use “editorial” in the loosest sense and with quotation marks because they provide no editorial support. Yahoo content managers simply check the article for viability and give it a pass/fail.

Then there are the technical bugs that remain unaddressed and which make publishing with Yahoo a chore. For example, hyperlinks put in by the author are regularly mangled and even removed by their software before the article reaches the content reviewer. The article is summarily rejected for having dead hyperlinks. It is simply easier to write here, where I know I control the finished product and have more flexibility in the final format. Yahoo still doesn’t support simple HTML code like tables which I find handy on occasion.

I could go on, but I let it be sufficient to say, “We have grown apart.” The spirit of the site that was AC, the spirit which appealed to me, drew me in, and gave me 6 years of satisfying publishing experiences, is gone. The final, symbolic act was the leaving of Luke Beatty, AC’s founder, from Yahoo’s management. Though the changes that make Yahoo no longer a fit for me were already in place, Luke’s resignation was the virtual wax seal on the document of change. The spirit of the old AC site is finally and officially gone and now, so am I.

I am grateful for the opportunities AC, and to some extent Yahoo, afforded me during the last six years. It helped me find my voice as a writer. It helped me make contact with other writers, many I consider my friends to this day. It helped me reach out to a broad audience and interact with readers of all stripes. I will continue to nourish those connections I made. I will just do it outside the confines of Yahoo.

So now begins theBarefoot 2.0 wherein I concentrate on the writing and not the trappings and politics of the site that simply distract from the content’s message. I even have the skeleton of a book in gestation. Here’s to learning when to say when and knowing how to move forward gracefully. My greatest solace is knowing that my readers can still choose to enjoy my writing here or where ever life brings us. We’ll move forward together to hopefully better writing to come.

P.S. The only bitter taste left in my mouth is the forums. I guess because when I found the AC forums, they were little-used. I jumped in with both feet and energized that community. When I started using the forums, multiple people independently contacted me to express their appreciation for my participation, humor, and helpfulness, a trend that continued until my last post, but which is not appreciated by the new owners.

I feel responsible for making the forums the vibrant, fun community it was. Sure, I had my moments of deliberate trollishness, but those were calculated responses to obvious malcontents and trolls. I still take credit for ridding the site of at least two particularly nasty personalities who disrupted the harmony of the community. Under the new regime, I am told that I am the disruptive influence. I’ve seen the same accusation made toward a few others who did nothing than freely contribute their time to mentor new members and answer the many question left moldering by the paid staff. Frankly, that hurts.

I poured my heart and soul into the community forums and there is no clearer sign that it is time to move on than when the place you nurtured tells you your services are no longer required. Being able to read between the lines, I can see that the current staff is too busy trying to keep their jobs among the hundreds of layoffs Yahoo has initiated, that they are unable to actually do their jobs. That is my one and only sour grape. The rest of my time with AC/Yahoo was a positive and productive experience.

Why You Need a Large Musical Repertoire

You need a decent musical background to enjoy life. That is my theory and my practice.

I’ll give you an example. Four leaping, howling dogs crowding the backdoor can be the perfect opportunity to stretch your musical lungs. You just need the perfect song to marry to the occasion. If your musical repertoire is limited, you’re going for the obvious Who Let the Dogs Out? and I can only say, “I hate you. That was too easy, just stupid and I hate that song. Oh, and I hate you. I hate you with a white, hot heat.”

So you don’t want to be lame and hated, do you? You need to get some more music under your belt. You need to needlessly hum melodies while standing in line at the DMV or the KFC. You need to put lots of music in your brain so it will come out at the opportune time. You need everything from Bach and Mozart to The Killers and (insert nameless rapper to be named later because I want to appeal to the kids, but can’t figure out why rap is considered a musical genre. It’s just bad poetry with a bass beat which speaks to the primal soul, but sucks when dressed in bling). But I don’t want to get to far afield. Back to our four-dogs-longing-for-a-tree example. What song comes out as you open that door and release the hounds?

Quick! Access the library: flip cards, microfiche, vinyl discs, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs, DVDs, scramble, turn, flip, No! Don’t struggle. This needs to roll off the tongue as if you just curiously tasted one of those hard candies from the dish on you grandmother’s coffee table. (Put it in your pocket. You can just throw those pants away.) The answer is…Run for the Hills. I’ll hate me for doing this, but link. Ron “dooshie” Dio said he wrote this song only to take advantage of some musical crap I don’t understand because I don’t read music, fifths and forths and so. Son of a…

I can’t satire it better than Jack Black as Tenacious D.

Here, you must know that 80′s metal was never my forte. I was a punky, new wavy dumbass. But if I hadn’t gotten out of my comfort zone, if I hadn’t explored other musical genre, I would have missed a golden opportunity. I was able to throw open the door, point dramatically to the sky and scream, “Run for the hills. Run for you life.” I did it as perfectly as Rock Band 3 could have expected.

The dogs were slightly confused and seemed to mill about in a circle until the repeated chorus propelled them out the door. Fourteen pine trees adorn my backyard. What dog can resist?

P.S. While typing this, I was listening to the Electric Six. I’ve adopted them as my life’s soundtrack. “Every hero needs a soundtrack,” but that’s movies and that’s a different topic.