Talent Overload

I don’t know how it started, but I’ve over-indulged on The Voice, X Factor, and ____’s Got Talent, videos on Youtube this weekend. I’ve never watched these shows on TV. I’ve only seen clips online. I know that they are designed to reinforce our worship of celebrity, but I discovered something just the opposite.

If you watch more than 10 of these clips, you soon realize that there is nothing special about the so-called celebrities we worship. There are people in your town who have amazing voices. Some exponentially better than people who regularly sell platinum albums. There are waiters and shoe salesmen who go home every night and belt out incredible covers of pop songs while vacuuming the rug or washing dishes.

And it’s not just singing voices. There are people next to you at stop lights or standing beside you on the subway who have untapped talents that would floor you. You may even be one of those people. Just because you never get to audition for American Idol doesn’t make your talent any less valuable than last season’s winner.

What I would urge everyone to do is stop blindly believing the cult of personality we’ve been taught to follow. Start getting to know the people you see everyday. If you’re one of the lucky ones with a hidden talent, share it where and when you can. Sing at the bus stop. Juggle for your nieces and nephews. Give a picture you paint to a friend or neighbor. Put yourself out there and share. We all have something we do well. Don’t hide it. Do it well for people you meet everyday.

Somewhere along the way, while chasing the odd, little happy, you’ll catch moments of unbridled joy.

The Internet Echo Chamber

Danger noise hazard

With so much information available, it’s amazing how insulated the average internet user is. They tend to find their echo chamber and stay there. With almost the entire knowledge of humanity available, the average person decides to hide in a blacked-out bubble of their own prejudices, reinforced by others who want the same. I understand the desire to be around people we can related to. I also understand the need to research a topic and come to a rational conclusion. Sadly, it is man’s desire not to be rational, but to rationalize their foregone conclusions.

One thing I’ve noticed about these online echo chambers is when a dissenting opinion does show up, the first reaction is “Get out of here you {insert explicative}.” If they are really proud of their position, shouldn’t their first response be, “Well hello dissenter. Allow me to dazzle you with the logic behind my position so that you, too, may enjoy the fruits of my well-reasoned point of view?” Is it that nonconforming opinions frighten them? Are they afraid the intruder might poke valid holes in their world view?

It doesn’t matter how many facts are behind an opposing view. Most people prefer the comfort of their own feelings to the discomfort facts may bring to bear. Though I’m able to understand this, I just can’t tolerate it. My brain is ruled by logic, reason, and the occasional joke. I try to keep my feelings for my family and dogs. I don’t mind making a fool of myself for a cheap laugh, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it to make someone feel better about a conspiracy theory or some Fox News story (story: a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel).

Next time someone asks a question in your little internet group, try, just for once, to engage them instead of dismiss them. I know it will be difficult, but there are rewards for leaving your comfortable bubble.

Keep chasing the odd, little happy.

 

Here’s Hank from VlogBrothers to expand this thought.

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.

The Best Thing About Football Season

Last Sunday was the Stupor Bowl, that annual tradition where millions of fans vicariously exercise through the jocks on TV while stuffing nachos, buffalo wings, & pizza down their throats. Am I glad football season is over? You’re damned skippy I am! I’ve just never been a football fan. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video is a novel in under four minutes.

May peace and tranquility reign until Autumn or late summer or July 4th or whenever football season starts again. They keep moving the start of the season up every year, don’t they?

And, yes, of the three thumbnails YouTube offered for the video, that was the most flattering. Please to enjoy my ramblings. There is no singing in this vLog like there was in last Saturday’s.

Link for the embed impaired

My Own, Personal Abishag

The shortened days of Winter have been scientifically proven to change your mood, not usually for the better. Today I stood in the long shadows, trying to pull the last, frail ray of heat from the setting sun. I pretended if I got in just the right sun beam, I’d warm up a few degrees. Alas, a childish game.

So I stood in the dying Winter sun, drew the toxic smoke from my pipe, and thought of David. I don’t know why, but David came to mind…King David…you know, the dead dude from the Old Testament. David’s life was anything but boring. He killed a lion. He killed Goliath. He out-witted Saul. He became king of Israel. The only thought I had of David was one lonely line from 1Kings 1:1 where, in the most poetical King James Version, it says, “he gat no heat.” The full verse is “Now king David was old [and] stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.”

You see, no matter what great things David had accomplished in his life, he succumbed to the ravages of old age like any other man. There was nothing special about David. He had circulatory problems. He got old. He died.

Oh, before you feel sad for David, the solution his court came up with to keep him warm was to find a young maiden to lie next to him. Ironically, her name was Abishag. I say ironically because verse 4 tells us, “…but the king knew her not.” No shagging there. Just simple body heat transfer.

So there I stood in the dying sun thinking, “he gat no heat.” I couldn’t stretch a fraction of a BTU out of old Sol. I couldn’t gat me no heat either. So I rocked from one foot to the other, finished my bowl, and went some place warmer. I’m getting older. You see, I’m a birth-survivor and that’s what happens to us birth-survivors; we get old. I never killed a lion or a giant. I’m king in only a small plot of land in a small sub-division. One day I’ll deal with my days getting shorter just like this time of the year. My sun will set and I will gat no heat. I’m just thankful for central heating. I don’t think my wife would allow me my own, personal Abishag.

Behind The Writing: Constructing Great Web Article Titles

The forth video in my “Behind the Writing” series was released at YouTube today. The topic is “Constructing Great Web Article Titles.”

The title of an article is responsible for 90% of the article’s success. In this video, I offer practical advice on how you can create good titles. One side effect of following this advice that I didn’t highlight in the video is that it keeps you very aware of your article’s topic. By adhering to step one, you will remain focused on your subject matter and be less likely to wander off topic.

Due to time constraints (the video clocks just under 6 minutes), I had to edit the connections to any of my articles. If time had allowed I would have linked this to The 7 Deadly Sins of Writing for the Web. 7 Quick Reasons Why No One Read Your Last Article. This article has been a perennial performer even though it contains my favorite, un-fixable typo.

The video has annotations to highlight the 4 main points. Have a pen handy to take notes.

Here is part 4 of Behind the Writing – A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet.

Behind the Writing: How to Write a Great Title

Bookmark the series play list and check it for updates. I’ll be adding videos to the play list as they are produced, hopefully weekly.

Happy writing!

New YouTube Series: Behind the Writing

I put up the first three videos in a series I have planned called “Behind the Writing.” I discuss where the idea for a particular article came from and things I learned writing.

The first video was a companion piece to the article Five Movies You Can Quote in Everyday Situations which went up yesterday. It typifies the idea generation process.

The second video uses one of my better performers, 33 Annoying Expressions, as an example to lay out three important lessons every on-line writer should know.

The third video uses five articles I wrote in a “Top 10” format to explain three critical things you must do to create an easily digestible web article.

None of the videos are more than 3 minutes long, so take a few minutes and let me know if these are helpful. As always you can find the entire collection on my YouTube channel. Just look for videos with “Behind the Writing” at the front of the title. My vLogs all start with “vLog” so you can easily find what you need.

Thanks for reading, watching, and most of all, commenting.

EDIT: I’ve created a YouTube Playlist to hold the entire series.

For God’s Sake, Don’t Google That

My three-day bout with some sort of nasty bacillus-er-other has come to a close. Thank y’all for the many get-well wishes. What ever this thing or things was, presented a new symptom every day. I won’t go into the gory details, but to say, “For God’s sake, don’t Google your medical symptoms.” I did and it really messes with your head.

The body’s natural defenses have to get rid of all those nasty bugs so it’s natural that things smell differently at some point. I plugged in “odor” into Google and its handy “I’m guessing what you’re thinking based on things other people searched” feature filled out all sorts of weird guess. Just a side note, people who use Google, and that means everyone, are curiously dreadful people, including me.

After visiting a couple of the the top hits, I determined that I have one of the following:

• Celiac Disease though I’ve never had it before and it’s a genetic disorder.
• Advanced, Stage 3 liver cancer though you’d think I’d have noticed some other symptoms before now.
• Any one of several heavy metal poisonings from eating large amounts of certain fish which I don’t eat.
• Am possibly pregnant. Call the National Enquirer.

For now, I’m going with “it’s just my body getting rid of all the nastiness.” But all this got me thinking. It sure would be helpful if there were people out there who could make heads or tails out of all this mess. Sure, it might take a little more college to learn this stuff, possibly four years or more. In the end, these people would be able to help us figure out what’s ailing us and maybe even help us get well. They could even dress up in funny costumes like white coats and whatnot. Yeah, probably a pipe dream. Besides, when you’re sick, you don’t feel like getting out to see people anyway.

So kids, learn from my mistakes and stay off the Google for medical advice. If you believe everything you read on the internet, you’ll be doing surgery on yourself with a power drill and Swiss Army knife in your garage out of the fear that some ganglionic mass has taken over your pituitary gland. All because WebMD said you may have Nakajo syndrome. Well House, if you do have Nakajo syndrome, your parents were siblings and no amount of warnings will dissuade you from your self-surgery.

As for the rest of you, be well.

Oh, and if your armpits smell like tacos, the cure for that is “take a shower.” That’s a freebie from me to you.

When Sparkly Vampires Kick Your Ass

Last night, my wife breezed through the living room asking for something. I wasn’t really clear what it was. She has a tendency to start our conversations before she enters the room and finish them from the kitchen, usually all while I’m either writing, proofing (ha), or intensely playing poker. Normally, I hear, “Blah…Blah…So don’t forget to buy that.” Huh? What am I supposed to buy?

It turned out to be the September edition of National Geographic. Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Where did that come from? But being the good and faithful husband I am, I stopped by Books-a-Million while out-and-about today and grabbed the September Nat. Geo. for her.

The woman ahead of me at the cash register was buying something from the tree-killing Twilight series, but the best part of her transaction was the gushing coming from behind the counter. This kid was way, way, way too into Twilight. Then he got all forlorn and misty when he said, “I probably won’t get to see the new movie since I’m going off to basic in October.”

As some of you know, I grew up Army. I have the greatest respect for our men and women in uniform. I wanted to give this kid some encouragement. I wanted to tell him I was proud of his sacrifice. I wanted to give him some sage wisdom to carry with him, maybe even onto some foreign shore some day. Something that might save his life. I wanted to, but this is what came out of my mouth:

“Kid, I want to give you some advice for boot camp. Keep that thing about liking the sparkly vampires under your hat. Trust me on this one. You’ll have a much better relationship with your drill sergeant if you just don’t bring it up. Just keep that to yourself, unless you want a nickname you’ll never shake.” He agreed that was probably the best course of action.

I hope that young lad starts the new phase of his life a bit wiser for meeting me. I hope one day he thinks back on a random meeting with a stranger in a book shop and thinks, “That guy really changed my life. In fact, he saved my life.”

I hope my words prevent him from letting it slip over evening chow in the mess one night, just how great he thinks Twilight is. I’ve got to tell you, once everyone in basic training knows you like sparkly vampires, you’re going to get the sparkly-vampire crap knocked out of you for the next six weeks.

And you’ll never shake the nickname, “Sparkles” or “Twilight Toes”. That crap will haunt you forever. No one ever wants to be in the thick of a fire-fight and hear, “Get Sparkles on the radio! We need fast movers!” or “Lay down some Willy Peter, Twilight Toes! We need smoke!”

So I think I did him some good. I may have save a whole platoon of men. You never know just what effect a butterfly’s wings will have.

Oh, and Nat. Geo.? Totally worth a peek this month.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

My wife is a believer in dreams. I don’t mean she has lofty aspirations or inspirational goals. I’m talking about the fuzzy images her brain generates while she is asleep. Many the morning I’ve awakened to cold, peering eyes watching me from her side of the bed. Those are the mornings when I know, some how, some way, I’ve been up to no good in her dreams … and I’m about to hear about it.

A common scenario involves her dreaming that we are both back in high school, wherein my dreamy doppelganger is ignoring her and is putting the teenage moves on some other girl. On those mornings, my coffee is less tasty while I hear about what a cad I am … er … was in high school. Not the high school of 30 years ago, but the high school of 30 minutes ago when she was dreaming. It’s all very confusing for me.

I only know one thing. At some point during my shower that morning, the water will suddenly burst forth in a jet of steam when my wife exacts her revenge by flushing the toilet for no other reason than to scald me … er … my dream self … er … but my flesh self still has first-degree burns. It’s all very confusing for me.

My sly male brain concocted a plan. I would tell her I had a dream. Her strong belief in the validity of dreams would compel her to follow up on my dream. It was a perfect plan, until I put it into action.

I set it up one morning with, “G’morning, Dear Heart. I love you. Wow! I had a dream last night.” Step one. Interest piqued.

“What did you dream?” Her reply fell right into my trap.

“It was a wild sex dream.” Bait dangled. Of course, she must know if she was part of my dream.

“Was I in it?” Bait taken. Now to snuggle up close and seal the deal.

“Of course sweetheart. Who else would be in my sex dreams but you?” Get ready to call work and tell them I’ll be late…

“That counts then. We’re good for another week.” Damn you, twisting female logic! At least I could take my shower as cold as necessary after my failed plan.

Today’s lesson: reach for your dreams with an open hand in case you have to pimp slap a brother on the way.