The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

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Should You Blog About Sex With Other Bloggers?

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At New Delhi Zoo

This past week I read more posts that mom bloggers wrote about how dumb their husbands are and I wondered what is wrong with these women.

It is not the first time I have seen posts like this nor will it be the last. It is a phenomena in which some people think it is cute, clever and or funny to write a post about how dumb their spouse is.

And to be fair, I have seen posts written by men about their wives that cross this line too, but not as many. What I can’t remember seeing are posts by gays in which they badmouth their partners/spouses.

Don’t know if it is because I haven’t come across it or if it is because it doesn’t happen.

I Don’t Understand This

If you know me in real life you know I am mostly unfiltered. I speak my mind pretty openly and share my thoughts but I do it to a point.

You will rarely hear me talk about certain personal matters because there are boundaries and because it is unfair.

When you supposedly love someone why do you think it is ok to write posts that make them look ignorant and moronic. Some stories are funny and sometimes it is ok to talk about something someone did because it was kind of silly.

Sometimes you read these posts and are confident that the subject would laugh and consider this teasing and sometimes you wonder about the line because it comes across as being mean spirited.

So I ask myself where the line is and do people even recognize when it is being crossed?

Too Much Information

Have we reached a point in time where too much information no longer exists?

If tell you about the woman who caught me with her tooth while simultaneously stabbing my “lower package” with a fingernail and how I howled in pain is that funny.

BTW, that didn’t happen. I don’t howl.

No, really, it didn’t happen. I am just unfiltered.

But even if I wasn’t making that up I didn’t say who I was talking about because sometimes you just need to keep some things to yourself.

Sorry Eddie Snowden and Julian Assange, I don’t believe that sharing everything with everyone is good. Sometimes those leaks hurt people far more than they help, but I digress.

Hard Stop

One of my favorite things about blogging is how it serves as a place to share our thoughts and how you can capture a snapshot in time.

What that hard stop refers to is I am not going to go back and edit this to try and make it look any more polished than a quick 13 minutes of writing.

It is just a moment in time, capturing some thoughts.

But I will link to several other pieces that I had thought about weaving in here because I thought it was worth tying them in one capacity or another.

Yeah, I could have taken a few more minutes to tie them in but I want to see a movie and have to run to make sure that I get there on time.

It is the weekend and sometimes the best thing we can do is disconnect for a few minutes and not worry about fans, followers, readers or circles.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is get out and spend time in the real world doing things with people you care about. Try it sometime, you might like it.

You might have something more interesting to write about that doesn’t consist of complaining about how fat your spouse is or the biological weapon they released in the bathroom.

The Blog Assassin

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The Assassin's Creed

They came just after midnight and had it not been for the hairs standing up on the back of my neck I wouldn’t have known they were there.  Don’t ask me how or why I knew they were there.

Maybe it is the same sixth sense that animals have before an earthquake or a tornado or maybe they stepped on the loose floorboard in the hallway. Either way it doesn’t matter because when I turned around my right hand was already clenched in a fist and the left was flying through the air with a vicious jab.

Except I didn’t connect with anything but the wall.

The idea had been to knock him/her back on their heels and then follow up with the same right hand that had registered more knockouts than an audition at Hooters. The plan would have been great but like so many others before it the damn thing didn’t work.

Insult Is Added To Injury

Instead of staring down triumphantly I found myself being pummeled by well aimed kicks and fists. None of them hurt all that much but you can still die by a thousand paper cuts.

So I centered myself and called upon the Force, I thought “What would Yoda do” and then tried to make like that little green muppet but he is 800 year-old Jedi master and I am 44 year-old Jewish kid from L.A. who is approaching middle age.

And that my friends is the key element, I am approaching middle age but not quite there yet. If I was actually middle aged I would have accepted that I couldn’t defeat the blog assassin because my old body wouldn’t do it.

But since I am not middle aged yet I knew that I wouldn’t have to worry about being as good as I once was, I just had to be as good as I am now and damn, when I am on I am exceptional.

Exceptionally good at texting my buddy because the man handles my hosting and he knows that when I say I have broken the blog I need help.

The Database Crashed

Yeah the whole fercockteh thing blew up and ten thousand posts disappeared. That is a big part of why the place looks a little bit different.

I haven’t had time yet to fix all of the crap that was damaged in the crash but I can deal with it later. I am just happy that I got my stuff back because I would have been really upset if I had lost everything.

In the interim this place will look like it is under construction for a bit. It is 1 am now and there is no time or energy to deal with all of the aesthetic repairs now.

BTW, I do backup the blog on a regular basis just in case things happen because you never know when the blog assassin will show but it usually happens on a night like tonight where I planned on going to bed before midnight.

Don’t Blog For Traffic

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When I am at my best I dance without worrying about what I look like and write without concern for what I read or sound like. I know that I do things differently from  most people. I know that I have spent most of my life standing on the outside looking in.

Guess what? So have most of you.

It took me a while to catch on and realize that the cool kids didn’t know a damn thing more about life and living than I did or do. I am proud to say that I never spent much time trying to be like them. Some of that was because I didn’t care and some because I couldn’t.

We didn’t have the money for me to wear the same clothes or go on the same trips so I couldn’t talk about some things without sounding like a silly poseur. Maybe that is when I started to become more cynical and grew a bit harder or maybe it happened after I had my heart broken a few times. Not really sure and I don’t know that it matters.

What matters to me is simple- family and friends.

What matters to me is doing things that feed my heart and fuel my soul. That is where my focus is and what I spend energy on.

I Know Who I Am

I know who I am. I know that there is a fire that burns inside my belly at a temperature that thermometers can’t measure. I know that I used to think of myself as being the easiest going person around and that one day I realized I am not quite who I thought.

I am intense. I come on like a freight train. When I play contact sports some people complain because I hit…hard. It is not because I am trying to prove how masculine or tough I am. It is because I have a body built for demolition and not for grace.

When I am going three quarters to full speed it takes a bit of doing to turn and or stop. Sometimes that means that I bump into people. When you outweigh someone by 80 pounds they tend to get the worst of it.

It sucks to get hit by the bigger truck. I know because it has happened to me a lot. When I play ball I usually get stuck guarding the bigger guys on the other side. All we can do is try our best not to hurt and get hurt.

But you can’t play the game without taking a chance. You can’t carry the ball up the middle and expect not to be hit. You can’t live life locked inside a box and expect to get all that you desire.

Take a Chance

I am excited and a bit nervous. I keep hinting at some of the potential changes going on around here. I keep dancing around the topic because until some things are certain I don’t want to speak more about them. Call it superstition.

I call it opportunity. I call it a chance to start a new chapter in my life and an opportunity to begin writing a new story. I call it crazy making because it is so close I can almost touch it and so far away that I can’t quite reach it.

Forgive me for the continued sports analogies, but it reminds me a bit of my last basketball game. I missed the shot I took and grabbed the rebound and missed it again…three more times.

Let me sum it up for you. In less than a minute I missed a shot from corner three point line, got the ball back and missed three under the basket. Got fouled three times and didn’t manage to put it in.

That irks me- but I didn’t quit. I just passed the damn ball and my team scored.

The lesson there is that when the door is locked you don’t have to break your hand or foot trying to break it down. There are alternatives.

Don’t Write For Traffic

I don’t blog for traffic or for accolades. I write because I have to. I write because I want to become a better writer. I blog because it offers a way to improve my writing and because there are business opportunities tied into it.

But mostly I do it because it brings me joy and when I am on my game it makes more than my soul sing. It brings me peace of mind and that is priceless.

What Does Your Blog Say About You?

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I make a point to review my “About Me” page quarterly. There is no science behind that number. It just made sense to me to check it on a semi regular basis to see if it tales the kind of tale I want it to tell.

Every so often I need to look at it and make sure that it is in sync with the goals I have in place. I take some time to read the description I wrote about myself and the blog and take a look at the posts I linked to.

There are 14 posts listed below. My stats show that my “About Me” page is among the most heavily trafficked pages on my blog. So I need to ask myself if the 14 posts below are telling a story that I still want told.

As the year goes by I try to make a point to note any posts that blow up. If I have something that is really popular be it comment and or pageviews  I will often include it. But I also make a point to grab posts that I think are examples of my best writing.

So here I am, evaluating it all again. It is well after midnight so I am not going to make a decision about these links now or those that aren’t included, but I expect I will make a decision soon.

  1. A Father Describes Parenting
  2. A Father’s Burden
  3. Inside the Blogger’s Studio- A Dream, Er Nightmare
  4. The GermoPhobe
  5. What I Dream About
  6. I am In Love
  7. Becoming a Dad
  8. Grandpa
  9. Donuts
  10. Save The Last Dance For Me- 75 Years of Marriage
  11. An Uncertain Certainty
  12. Four Generations & A Wedding
  13. The Best Thing My Father Ever Said To Me
  14. 1 Foolproof Way To Become a Better Writer

Are there posts that aren’t included here that you think should be?

Livefyre Returns To The Blog

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“Some men see things as they are and say ‘why’? Others dream things that never were and say ‘why not’?”
~ George Bernard Shaw

The 17 long time readers know that I have spent a chunk of time testing out different commenting systems. At one time or another I have used Blogger, Haloscan, Intense Debate, DISQUS, the WP native system, CommentLuv and Livefyre.

When I first moved from Blogger to WP I spent a chunk of time using DISQUS and was relatively happy with it, but there were a few issues and I chose to move to Livefyre.

My initial go around with LF was good but I received a regular flow of complaints from several readers about it. Technical issues with the system made it impossible to comment so I moved over to using CommentLuv with the WordPress native commenting system.

That worked very well and overall I was quite happy with it. However recently I have been getting hammered with comments that straddle the line between spam and useful and it is creating an enormous amount of work.

These people aren’t commenting because they want to be part of our community or because they are trying to advance the conversation and I am tired of it. LiveFyre is about to roll out a number of changes that sound very exciting and I think the time is right to turn it back on.

I want to see if that helps fix the problem. I also like the fluid manner in which LF encourages community building within a comment section so I am ready to see if that will work here.

And that is why I turned it back on. In the interim your old comments should be importing themselves into the system and business is going on as usual here. We’ll take another swing at bat and see how it plays out.

As always if you have questions, comments or concerns please feel free to leave them in the comments or to contact me.

666 Devilish Ways To Become A Social Media Superstar

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Typewriter

Friends if you want to really get something out of this post you are going to need to listen to Stairway to Heaven…played backwards. If you don’t understand how that corresponds to the headline than you are too young to be reading this post and probably not old enough to use social media.

Dammit, I forgot that social media is a young person’s game. Hell if I ran some stuffy old organization that needed a social media presence I would go out and hire a teenage gril because everyone knows that teenage girls are social media experts, next to mommy bloggers. Oops, I am probably going to be assaulted by angry mommy bloggers now who will tell me that what I just wrote is offensive.

Listen up ladies, dad bloggers have all the power and we don’t take crap from anyone- we give it out. Really.

Ok, now that we got the opening nonsense out of the way let’s talk turkey about how to make social media work for you. I lied when I said that I have 666 devilish ways to become a social media superstar because you don’t need that many.

Really we could boil it down to three but we are not going to hit those yet because there is a fundamental problem that has to be addressed first.

Why Are You Doing This & What Do You Hope To Accomplish?

It sounds obvious but you might be surprised by the number of people/businesses that are in social media because they think they should be and not because they have a plan or goal in mind.

Reminds me of an old line that I hate but I’ll share it because it is applicable. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  When you establish a goal you provide yourself with a foundation that you can use to build a plan of action to achieve your goal.

And that my friends brings me to my next point, popularity is not a plan. Want to know why? Watch the video below that my friend Ruth made.

True Power In Social Media

The easiest way to measure true power in social media is very simple. Will people respond to your call to action. What happens if you ask them to click/buy/read/tweet/like something? Will they do it or will the overwhelming majority of them click, surf and move on.

It really doesn’t matter how popular you are if no one responds to your call to action. But like Ruth said, popularity isn’t necessarily the best metric to use to determine success. Comments aren’t currency either.

So my question to you dear reader is simple, why do you blog and what do you hope to accomplish?  Have you established goals for yourself/business? Do you have a plan? What does “success” look like to you? Money? Community? Actions? New friends?

Share it in the comments and let’s talk about it.

P.S. In the near future I will be publishing my own eBook about blogging/social media where you can find more of my thoughts/ideas on this. Sadly you won’t find the missing 663 devilish ways to become a social media superstar but you will find lots of other cool stuff there.

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