Revellian

Thoughts and Fiction of Bobby Revell

Archive for June, 2008

Crooked Politicians and the Honor of a Common Thief

Jun 12

Posted by Bobby Revell in Humor, thought

Hey everyone, I was watching the news on CNN earlier – The Glenn Beck Show. Don’t worry if you don’t know who Glenn Beck is, and don’t stop reading because you despise politics with the most soul searing, black hearted hatred a human being could possibly muster; I promise you’ll understand this post. I don’t care what country you’re from, what rock you crawled from under or what multi-trillion dollar penthouse you live in…you will understand.

Glenn Beck is this news anchor/entrepreneur/comedian guy who says he’s looking for answers, you know, the answers to America’s problems: like oil prices, the American dream, education, hunger and so forth. He’s a self-made guy who doesn’t have much college, so I do respect the fact that he did make it. He often interviews Jonah Goldberg, the author of “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” as a guest political pundit on his show. I love the philosophical egotism of these guys and often enjoy their discussions.

They were discussing the possible hidden secrecy of back room deals and secret greased palms – often a hot topic among the Internet’s rabid conspiracy theorists. They basically said that there are no “back room” deals and the politicians do everything out in the open – completely transparent. What I want to know is are these guys being paid to say that? Do they actually believe it? Are they insane? It doesn’t take a genius to know just how corrupted and our government is.

Yesterday, congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush for a sickening array of crimes against America. The Bush administration actually paid military war experts to say things on every top media news network, among tons of other questionable actions to further their agenda. Will he be impeached? Probably not. The point is, this is just one tiny piece of a gargantuan pie of lies, corruption and deceit.

Every problem going on is caused by a corrupted congress – so far gone – I don’t know if I will ever trust anything they say for the rest of my life. Of course there are billions of back room dollars changing hands, bribing judges and paying for nefarious college educations of children spawned by these crooked scumbags. I don’t buy into every conspiracy theory, and many of them are ridiculous (for all I know, the most ridiculous ones are the only true ones…lol). We the public have the right to rip these people to shreds and leave their political bodies in a burning pile of roasted flesh…disfiguratively speaking. It’s really time for normal citizens to gain the power they could have if they just paid attention. I don’t believe for a second that a new president will improve things. Whoever gets elected had better perform! Every new president has great hopes and dreams – until they get in the White House and Washington changes them. We shall see.

So, now to the climax of my post, ohhhh….uggghhh…ahhhh. Whatever happened to the good old days when people just took your money outright. This may sound insanely deranged and twisted, but there is a certain amount of honor in a criminal just shoving a gun in your face and taking your wallet. There’s a purity and earnestness about a fearless crook pointing a shotgun at a bank teller’s head and saying, “Fill my bag with cash or I will blow your head off.”

Compared to these shady politicians who steal and rob behind closed doors, smelling like fresh spring honey glazed petunias beneath a mask of deception, a simple crook does actually seem honorable

I’ve always loathed the double standard of white collar crime being considered less malevolent or immoral than a common street crime. If an unscrupulous welfare administrator embezzles $100,000.00 from starving school children, it is considered a lesser crime than a bank robbery at gunpoint. What’s the difference? The real difference is that the bank robbers have the balls to go in risking their own lives to get what they want; the spineless namby pamby creme puff embezzler does not. It’s all in which perspective you see it.

It’s much like a political leader who sends men to die in war, while they do not have the bravery to go themselves. This is so much more the case than it was in ancient times. Leaders like Alexander the Great had the brains and the guts to lead his armies on horseback, willing to die first. Compare that to a modern president, who would piss in his pants while facing being blown into pieces. It always bothers me to think about how, while 17 year old boys are being immolated by bombs, the leader who sent them is drinking 100 year old scotch and eating fine cuisine in the lap of luxury – often playing a round of golf or two afterwards – far, far away from the horrendous pain of reality.

I do not condone crime of any kind, this editorial is only meant to give you a unique perspective.

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18 Comments

Explosive Stumbleupon Traffic

Jun 11

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging ethics, blogging tips, Stumble Upon

I am not very fond of using social bookmarking to promote my blog. I think people often forget that blogging is social networking, but get overly caught up in different sites to build traffic, like Digg and many others. My favorite is Stumbleupon. What most people don’t realize is how much traffic a single stumble can bring. Because of how the Stumbleupon algorithm works, it is fairly common to receive massive quantities of traffic from only one person stumbling you at the right time. Every now and then you get that lottery stumble, which can generate thousands of visitors in just a few hours.

On May 19th, my great blogging buddy Marzie – the Genie Princess stumbled my homepage (thanks Marzie!). I had reached around 80 visitors that day, until that magical stumble! A few hours later, I noticed I was up to 674 readers and 969 page views in under an hour – that was quite an explosion of traffic. I ended up with almost a thousand visitors before I went to sleep. Many of those visitors left comments and viewed more than one article, which was fantastic. You don’t always get such an explosion of traffic, but every now and then, you do. It’s freaking great when it happens.

I wrote an article about how to use Stumble correctly: Stumble Upon: A Cool Ethical Approach with a few solid tips and a few great links you should check out. Here are a few more:

  1. Don’t stumble your own articles – a TOS violation
  2. Don’t trade stumbles with people – a TOS violation
  3. Don’t ask to be stumbled – a TOS violation
  4. Try to review what you stumble – many people don’t bother. I explain how in my link above.
  5. Use it often, and it will increase your chances of being stumbled
  6. Let people know you’ve stumbled them in a post comment
  7. Make sure you review every time you stumble

All these tips are basic, but if you violate Stumbleupon’s terms of service, they will drop your account. I know many people this has happened to. It’s a great way to support your fellow bloggers. Many people use social networks only to gain things for themselves, they rarely do things only for others. This is what is wrong with society as well as in blogging. I use Stumbleupon everyday because I know how powerful it is. I stumble people’s homepages, and also when I see a really good post. Just keep the Stumbleupon toolbar open, and use it liberally. If you use the stumble tool bar, take a look at who stumbled your site. You do that by clicking the little white balloon while looking at a particular page. The ethical and honest way to use it, is to stumble lots of people and hopefully you’ll get stumbled too – not because you’ve asked (hey I’ve asked before but I won’t anymore), but because someone chose to on their own.

Sometimes I wish I had a different approach to blogging, but I am happy with my methodology. I have written many Bobby’s Batch posts where I link to my fellow blogger’s fine posts. In my opinion, it is the best way to help people out. If blogging worked by such ethical and kind giving, the blogosphere would be a better place. My blog is rarely found in Google searches landing on my homepage. With Google searches, my individual blog posts are found, which is what I want. It is the content that matters, not the homepage. However, I am trying to change my views on many things in blogging, be much more positive and less critical of what other people do.:smile:

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45 Comments

Bobby’s Batch #16 – Pagerank, Entrecard and Blogging

Jun 9

Posted by Bobby Revell in Bobby's Batch, social networking

One thing I really like to do on each of my Bobby’s Batch posts, is that each have a unique title and an article included before the links are listed. I have a few blogging observations this week I’d like to share with you.

About Pagerank

I have many pet peeves about blogging and I believe them to be rooted in my personal sense of ethics. One area most bloggers do not understand is concerning Google pagerank. I’m often perplexed when I see a personal blogger (or any blogger) displaying their pagerank in their sidebar – it’s obvious they have no idea what pagerank is or why it exists. Pagerank determines your ability to be found through a google search while they are looking for answers of some type. If you write a personal blog, especially about your life, etc, then pagerank is absolutely meaningless to you.

No matter how high it is, you will not be found through a search unless they enter your blog title in the search bar – how many people will ever do that?. This is especially true if you have a non-niche blogspot blog. To me, any stat in your sidebar, is much like wearing a clothing item with price tags hanging off of it – it’s just a little tacky. It’s like wearing a t-shirt with your college diploma imprinted on it.

Much of my outlook stems from martial arts, Zen and musical instrument playing/building. One of my favorite comparisons is a martial arts teacher wearing a black belt with ten stripes on it and the word ‘Master’ written in big letters across his back. Any real martial artist knows this probably means he cannot fight nor has any conception of martial art combat. I think what I’m saying is it is what’s inside that matters, just like my perception of people. Maybe I’m a little too uptight or hardcore about this, but I’m trying to get over it.

I am a musician and have been playing stringed instruments for decades. When I hear modern pop musicians, the music itself has become irrelevant – much of it written on a PC program using patches and samples. The music is usually written around a star vocalist by someone else, not by the singer. There are very few musical artists that actually write the music for their own songs. Nowadays, a great guitarist or drummer has become irrelevant. I cannot name hardly any gifted musicians in today’s popular music scene. They are simply a rare breed. The ones who do make it are extremely lucky. Just look at rap music. I am not saying that all rappers don’t have talent, what I’m saying is that the music backing their rap is ridiculous and requires absolutely no talent to compose. An artist who doesn’t write their own music (actually compose it and write in down in musical notation) should not be allowed to win a Grammy award. If they had this rule, 95% of all Grammy winners wouldn’t even qualify for an award. It’s like McDonald’s hamburgers: just because they’ve served billions doesn’t mean they taste good. They are like fast food TV dinners. I cook my hamburgers at home…you know, the ones that really are good.

Views on Entrecard

Lately, I’ve found my blogging, or how I visit other bloggers being taken over with things like Entrecard. Blogging is not about how many points you get on Entrecard. The idea of writing meaningful content has been replaced with this click happy attitude of point collecting, showing off stats and so forth. It wasn’t like that a few years ago – this is an all new type of fever, and it’s getting worse. The truth about Entrecard, is while it may increase your traffic, the traffic you get is 90% one second visits, which is really bad for for any blog. This is why I only use it sparingly. Also, if you use Adsense or many other PPC programs and you have the ads on the front of your homepage, you will become smartpriced and render your profits worthless. It’s so much better to only have ads on individual posts, and not on your homepage. Entrecard will increase your bounce rate (the quickness by which people instantly leave to click onto the next Entrecard site..haha), which is what you don’t want. Before I installed Entrecard, the average visitor looked through 7 articles on my site and spent 10 minutes looking through them. Now, it’s down to one pageview and a two minute visit average. I am seriously thinking of removing it from my site, but with so many friends depending on it, I have fallen in to a pit of dependence and am afraid I may lose many readers if I remove it. It’s like nasal spray – once you start using it, you can’t stop because your nose will stay stuffy for a few agony filled weeks upon quitting. It’s a definite catch-22. I probably use Entrecard for 5 minutes per day and click one if I see it. I only pay a max of 128 credits for an ad and I have never turned down an ad. I see some people rejecting 35% of all attempts to purchase – what is that all about? If I see someone rejecting a larger percentage of ads, I will not even attempt to get one as I don’t want to ruin my 0.00% rejection stat…hahaha!

Ok, that’s enough negative critiquing of Entrecard. It really depends on how you as an individual use it. It really does offer more positive benefits than it does negative and I have made several new friends through it. I think like anything, it can be detrimental if you overuse it and depend on it too much. People forget you could just as easily go through the main directory of Blog Catalog visiting everyone there, leave comments, make friends and gain new readers the old fashioned way.

There’s really no way to judge whether content is good or not, at least from an algorithmic standpoint. That is really up to the masses. I also realize that I don’t control anyone but myself and the content I write, so I will not take the outside world personally. On another aspect, I have many blogging friends, all writing different content. Some write only about their family, some are just having fun, some write with stunning brilliance and some are trying to get rich – most fall somewhere in the middle. No matter what they write, I still read because they are friends!

What it boils down to, is that we are all in this thing together and amazingly, we are all getting along quite well. I am just trying to come to terms with my perception of the blogosphere. I don’t like show offs, but I may still like the person doing the showing off. I think it’s a crazy thing to call yourself a liberal or conservative, because none of us are truly one or the other. I am an independent in my political, religious and every other belief I have – chances are, so are each and everyone of you on a deeper level. Now for this weeks links:

How To Upgrade To The Latest Version of WordPress – from Garry Conn. There are lots of sites that can show you how to upgrade your self-hosted WordPress blog, but this one is actually easy to understand. It shows you how to do it step by step via FTP, which is really the correct way to do it.

Euromillions Rollover Contest – comment here – from FiddyP. My buddy Andy Bailey’s new contest. All you have to do is leave a comment to win a great prize. As you may know, I won his last contest and quickly received my brand spanking new set of headphones. While you’re there, check out his many fantastic articles.

Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less – from Rolando. Go to this post for information on how you can help convince congress to drill for oil here in America. Like Rolando and many of you, I can barely afford to drive with these skyrocketing gas prices. The way you change things is by simply getting involved.

Perfectly Imperfect – By Catatonic Kid. She is truly a brilliant writer and is definitely worth reading. This post is but one of many great ones. Be sure to visit her, you see some truly introspective passion.

Incomplete Figure – By Francis Scudellari of Caught In The Stream. This is a strange and undulating poem. It’s actually one of my favorites of all the poems I’ve read on line. I love the unusual perspective. I am new to his blog, but really enjoy his writing style and his unique drawings.

The Blood River Flesh Hunter – A bizarre short story I wrote a few months back (one of my personal faves of my own work). Please read the above poem and then read my story, you will feel very unusual when you’re done…I promise!

You Know You’re a Flirt When – Written by The Sandman, one of my favorite writers on line, offers this fantastic and hilarious post. Highly recommended! This is a late addition to this batch – I’m so glad I saw it.

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36 Comments

Garry Conn Helped Me Save my Blog

Jun 7

Posted by Bobby Revell in hacking, wordpress

Wow…today is an amazing day here at Revellian Dot Com – I could never express just how great a day it is! Earlier, well actually yesterday on July 07 at around 9:30 PM, my site disappeared. It was replaced with a site comprised of Indian Writing. I was shocked to say the least as I thought my site had been hacked. It is a horrible feeling to think your site has been stolen. Initially, I called my host (Bluehost), and they told me that I had been hacked and there was nothing I could do. I had a knot in my stomach that sat like a hand grenade in the deepest trenches of my bowels; the sudden realization that everything you’ve worked on for years – wiped out in seconds by some evil hacker – what a horrifying feeling.

To be absolutely straightforward and honest, I must tell you that there are only a few people I thought of whom I completely trusted to check out my situation: Garry Conn and Andy Bailey – two guys that really know what they are doing. I also thought of contacting Brown Baron, Mike Wheeler, Bush Mackel, Mark Sierra or Madhur Kapoor – five other guys whom I consider experts on the subject. I am a psychic even if you do not believe in psychics, and I just knew instantly who would be available at that very instant: Garry Conn. He was logged onto Googletalk – so I asked for help. Garry stepped in and started asking questions, like how to log into my WordPress account.

It’s a really big deal to just divulge your most private of information to someone, but I know anyone of these 7 guys are trustworthy, which is really saying a lot. It’s nice to know people! Let’s get to the nitty gritty. I contacted Garry Conn, and he responded instantly. What was so awesome is that Garry has 3-way calling, so we called my host together – what a great feeling to have an expert on the line with you. The first guy we talked to from Blue Host was Darren (at least I think that was his name). Garry asked him several questions and told him he believed my site wasn’t hacked, but was instead a problem with my C-Panel (the backend of Blue Host). The guy was really unhelpful and basically told us to fix it ourselves. Garry was insistent that the problem was not a WordPress issue, but was a server side issue on their behalf. I actually have two domains, one of which is not being used, but both were pointing at a strange site.

We finally talked to a superior, who actually helped. In the midst of telling us what the problem might be, the higher ranking Blue host employee discovered the problem which stemmed from them having multiple customers on the same server. In my case, the idea of having my blog hacked by some form of code injection really scared me – this is why I asked for help. Garry handled the entire situation with absolute professionalism. I really didn’t even know what to say, but Garry did – he basically commanded the guy and finally the problem was resolved. So, my site was not hacked.

In the process, I learned that I have too many plug ins and a bunch of database tables that are unneeded. I am currently cleaning all that junk out of my system. Garry said he doesn’t use any plug ins at all. I learned some valuable information in the process. If you use a plug in, contact the author and ask if if it changes your database or if it only adds something on the surface. Sometimes, plug ins do things to your database that cannot be undone – so be extremely careful when adding one. He showed me a page on the WordPress codex, WordPress Database Decription. There are only 10 tables necessary for any WordPress blog. I am cleaning out all the ones which are not needed. Before you get into deleting any unnecessary tables, be sure to back them up beforehand. If you have any questions, contact one of us for help.

I had a fantastic conversation with Garry via the phone. We talked about everything from blogging, politics to life itself – a great conversation. I could go on forever about all this, but I just want to thank Garry Conn. He really helped me out and it means the world to me. There really are great people out there, and I consider Garry to be one of the best. My blogging spirit has been renewed. Be sure to visit Garry at Garry Conn dot com and check out his incredible make money on line ideas. He wrote a great post entitled Garry Conn dot Com is Fixed! Come Check it Out! which explains some turmoil he went through during a server crisis. Maybe I could have fixed it myself; maybe someone else could have helped me; all I know is that Garry Conn is the one who did it. When you face losing everything, and you get it back with no problems – what a great feeling. Thanks Garry!:mrgreen:

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48 Comments

Lab Grown In Vitro Meat – Hamburger Horror

Jun 5

Posted by Bobby Revell in horror, Humor, Nutrition - Health

I was eating a hamburger earlier, and while crushing the meat fibers with my powerful muscle driven molars, I wondered what the animal’s life was like. Did anyone ever pet the poor beast? Did anyone scratch behind it’s fly attracting ears? Did it have a name? Was it ever loved? I gnawed another bite of animal flesh and a little roasted blood drizzled down my chin…mmm…yummy fluids. A man wearing a funeral-black suit sat in the booth with me on the opposite side – facing me. He said, “Hello, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Fernando Giovanni McDonnell; half Italian, half Scottish owner of McDonnell Meat Corporation. I saw you enjoying the delicious succulence of our best hamburger – I’m a psychic by the way – I could tell by your expression exactly what you’re thinking.”

“It’s nice to meat you Fernando, I’m Bobby,” I said, choking down another sliver of fried bovine, “So you’re psychic huh? Please…do tell, what am I thinking?”

“You’re wondering about the animal flesh in your mouth. You’re wondering who the animal is,” he pulled a picture out of his inner suit pocket and slammed it down on the table, “Meet Samuel…the beast from which meat was shredded – from his bones – machine strewn, chopped, whipped, blended and digitally fabricated into the scrumptious patty you’re now masticating.”

I picked a hair from between my teeth – flicking it onto Fernando’s suit. He scowled slightly and began laughing, “Haha…I guess we didn’t rinse Samuel’s meat correctly, an occasional hair gets through.”

I replied, “If I do masticate, I do it at home…in private, with the curtains drawn and lights off. Back to the hair, that was no bovine hair. I know bovine hair when I see it. That…Fernando…was a human pubic hair. I know a pubic hair when I see one; nonetheless, please tell me Samuel’s story.”

We both looked at the picture of Samuel – I paid particular attention to the flower in his mouth and happy go lucky look in his eyes. Fernando said, “Masticating means to grind the meat into a swallowable pulp…aka chewing – back to Samuel – well, no one ever loved him. No one ever petted him. No one ever cared about him either. ”

“How freaking heartbreaking,” I said.

Fernando turned towards the kitchen door, yelling, “Anthony, get your ass over here.”

A young guy dressed in blood sodden butcher’s garb walked out with a meat cleaver in his hand. He said, “What? I’m real busy killing killing a baby calf for our veal burgers.”

“Anthony, meet Bobby, he’s eating Samuel.”

“It’s really nice to meet you Bobby,” said Anthony, “I’m the guy who killed Samuel and hacked his body up into it’s respective cuts.”

I took another bite of my hamburger…I mean Samuelburger and asked, “How did you kill him?”

Anthony wickedly smiled, “With a sledgehammer. He didn’t die the first time I hit him,” I took another bite of Samuel, chewing feverishly while Anthony continued, “The first time I hit him, I pulverized his eye socket and blood splattered all over my face…it got all up in my eyes. And dude, that shit burns. You ever got cattle blood in your eyes? Anyway, he groaned in hellish agony…I mean the thing was screaming in pain! He staggered a few steps and tried to run. I used to just cut their heads off on a band saw while standing there alive, but we have an old one and you can’t get blades for it anymore. So I took a machete and chopped one of his legs off. He fell down and went into convulsions. I hit him…must’ve been 30 more times. When I finally finished, his head was beaten flat into the pavement – blood everywhere, buzzards circling above – it was a stomach wrenching nightmare. One of the trainees puked when he saw it…spineless green pea. We actually had to use a forklift to peel his carcass off the hot blacktop – his blood was already starting to cook. We killed him around an hour ago, I’ve been grinding up his meat ever since. Overall, he had a miserable life all jacked up on steroids…and then was ruthlessly beaten to death – heartlessly and without remorse. Hell, I enjoyed killing the stupid thing.”

I took my last bite, and washed it down with a sip of sparkling iced tea, “Ah…that hit the spot. What part of Samuel’s carcass was used to make the hamburger patty I just ate?”

Rolling his eyes, Anthony scratched his chin with bloody fingernails while a sliver of raw flesh dangled from the hairs on the back of his hand, “I’m not really sure, I think it was the left shoulder.”

I looked at Fernando and said, “Samuel was delicious, one of the best burgers I’ve ever tasted; however, I will not pay for my meal, there was a pubic hair on my bun.”

“Hahaha…” Anthony said laughing, “I’m sorry, that’s one of my sister’s pubic hairs…Carnillia, get out here!”

A beautiful red haired woman walked out, giggling, “It’s my pubic hair, I put one on every man’s hamburger…hehe.”

I replied, “Well, in that case…I’ll let it slide. It was quite silky – do you use a conditioner?”

“Yes!” she said, “I use a homemade mixture of Vaseline and jasmine flowers…I hope you enjoyed it. We forgot to change the name on the menu to fur burger.”

I must admit, my visit to McDonnell’s Butcher & Burger Heaven was quite interesting, I may go back tomorrow.

Lab Grown Meat

Have you heard about lab grown meat? Scientists all over the world are working on this concept, and astronauts are being currently fed this petri dish delicacy. When I started writing this post, I was just going to write about lab grown meat, but got carried away and wrote a morbid story instead. I don’t know what happened. I was watching “Pulp Fiction” for the 727th time while writing – listening to Samuel L. Jackson talk about why he didn’t eat pork. Like Samuel (I named my character after the noted actor), I don’t eat pork either. I don’t eat pork, bacon, pork sausage or anything from a pig. Years ago, I met a group of cannibals who were actually part of a tribal musical group, They told me that pork meat tastes exactly like human meat, thus ruining my appetite for pork forever.

Lab grown meat is actually known as in vitro meat, isn’t that appetizing? It all started when cosmetic companies were looking to test their chemicals on flesh other than human. Then animal rights activists got all riled up and forced them to actually grow skin to test their chemicals. See the chart below (I downloaded this picture six months ago, but cannot find the site I got it from – I’ll happily give credit if I can find the original site, the author is apparently a guy named John Lawson):

lab grown meat

lab grown meat

Isn’t that strange? Did you know that the chemical laden skin moisturizing sunscreen you’re currently spackling on your body was tested on actual human flesh grown in a petri dish? It should give you comfort that a poor animal wasn’t used. For actual in vitro meat, check out the chart below:

in vitro meat

in vitro meat

Here are the steps: 1. Scaffold-based cultured meat production: 1. Myoblasts in petri dish; 2. Porous collagen microspheres; 3. Myoblasts form myotubes on collagen microspheres; 4. Bioreactor; 5. Microwave; 6. Hamburger.

Eventually, entire muscles will be grown in labs – like a sheep’s buttocks muscle in an incubator with clear plastic blood vessels hanging out of it – blood pumped into it by a Jarvik artificial heart. Sounds grotesque? Well, it couldn’t be more grisly than eating an animal who was beaten to death with a hammer. Now enjoy your steak and pass the ketchup.

*The laboratory hamburger picture and text below it is from Would You Like to Eat ‘Cultured’ Meat? (originally from the University of Maryland) – a fantastic article by Roland Piquepaille. Make sure you read it…it’s fascinating.

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24 Comments

Bobby’s Batch #15 – Nomadic Digital Outcast

Jun 3

Posted by Bobby Revell in Bobby's Batch, social networking

It’s been a while since I wrote a batch, where I give links to some deserving writers. I usually write this on Sundays but since I’m still a free citizen, I’ll do it whenever I wish. I wanted to have at least 10 links, but I’m far too tired. I will be back on schedule for doing this next Sunday and will have even more selected posts. I won Andy Bailey‘s weekly contest and received my new iPod headphones…thanks Andy! Be sure to pay Andy a visit, and join in on his next contest. While you’re there, read some of his cool posts.

I am an Outcast

One thing I know about myself, since birth (yes, I remember being born – a horrifying experience), is that I never really fit in. I’m an outcast on so many levels. Put me and 99 other people in a room and I’ll be the one standing alone while everyone gathers in little groups of 4 or 5. I’m really terrible with meaningless small talk, and am perfectly content not being part of the crowd. I naturally gravitate towards blogging because I can say all those things I normally wouldn’t say in real life if you didn’t know me very well – trust me, I am a very difficult person to get to know.

While growing up, I always had a few friends, but never more than 2 or 3. Some people have hundreds of “friends” in their real lives, much like bloggers with 20,000 friends on Facebook or MySpace. I always hung out with other people who didn’t fit in because we had that in common. We were social rejects who refused to be part of all things normal. If everybody did something, I would make sure I didn’t. I approach blogging much the same way. When I first began blogging, I quickly learned how most just followed others, copied others and so forth. I used to have a vendetta against make money blogs, mostly because 99% of them are redundant, regurgitated, unoriginal, passionless, uninspired drivel – plagiarized from the “successful” ones. I personally don’t read any of the most popular blogs with 25,000+ subscribers. If you’ve read them once, there’s no reason to go back except for an occasional tidbit if needed. After a while, I gave up criticizing them – I have better thing to do. I just don’t read them – much like an offensively lame TV show – I just don’t watch it.

I’m such an outcast – even among my outcast friends – an outcast forming his own rebellion within a group of outcasts; a loner among loners. Reflecting on my teen years, I wonder: What’s a 15 year old kid, who practices guitar 10 hours per day and studies Zen, yoga and martial arts going to discuss with other kids who worry about their haircuts and what brand of shoes they wear? I remember as a seven year old boy, noticing how people grouped together and began their life long category of personhood. Are you a jock, geek, loser, dopehead or what? What category do you fall in? What group do you belong to? In college, I was faced with joining a fraternity, which I opposed with absolute disdain. Why would I join an exclusive group? What is exactly is an exclusive group? It’s doesn’t mean it’s a good or special group – it’s about exclusion. If you’re not in the group, you’re excluded from it. That’s why I despised those people who belonged. Well, I really didn’t dislike the people, just the idea of exclusivity. If I have to join a club to be your friend, then I will not be your friend. I don’t want to “fit in”. I prefer to think of people as individuals, not associated with a group of individuals. The blogosphere seems much like a high school where people are divided up into cliques – some snobbish, some friendly.

I know…I’m a cynical skeptic as well as an outcast. If you know me really well, I’m a goof who jokes sarcastically. If you don’t know me really well, I’m a quiet person. In my daily life, I listen much more than I speak. It’s amazing when you know people really well, who know nothing about you. I’m that guy at work everybody confides in and says nasty things about others to…oh my, the secrets I know. I guess that’s because I keep it all to myself, don’t tell anyone what they say and never add fuel to the fire – so they trust me.

I became interested in politics over the past few years and feel like such an outsider it’s ridiculous. I’ve come to the conclusion that the U.S. government is nothing more than a corrupted special interest group – I’m so disgusted I cannot take it anymore. We are supposed to choose where we fit in: conservative or liberal; I don’t fit in either group and never will. That’s how I feel about the Internet – I really don’t fit in anywhere; thus, I fit in everywhere. It’s quite lonely to be an individual these days. Now for this week’s links:

Wandering through BlogExplosion, MyBlogLog, and EntreCard – from Aldon Hynes of the Orient Lounge is a very interesting post (among many). I wrote the main part of this batch #15 last week and was surprised when I read Aldon’s post – the premise is quite similar, though mine is probably more negative. I know exactly how he feels. Make sure you read this very insightful article.

Retribution – from Why Paisley. This post pissed me off because her hosting service changed her domain name (the removal of the dash between why and paisley) and gave her no options. I suppose it could happen to anyone. She lost all her page rank and as far as I know, the change prevents her from doing a 301 redirect because she can no longer access the old domain. If she had psychic powers, she could have preemptively redirected before all this happened – but that’s a little much for any host to ask for. Because she is such a brilliant writer, it really bothered me to see this happen. Please read her great article and fix any links you have to her.

Facing Faults and Fears – My long time friend Becca aka Wonder Woman wrote a this great article about how caring and helping others can often keep you from taking care of yourself. It’s a quite wonderful and somber sentiment I strongly relate to.

Congress Wants to Make It Easier for People to Steal Your Content – From Dan at DCR Blogs. Here we go again with congress protecting criminals. I am all about political activism and this is very important for every American to do. Check out this article.

Hide and Seek – My friend J.C. from the blog Jasmin’s Heart has a guest writer, Jim Murdoch, who authored this post. It is a brilliant look into creativity and poetry – I found it very inspiring.

The Adventures of Marie Cambridge – Story Game 4 – I was fortunate enough to be invited by Teeni to participate in her cool writing project where several writers get to add a paragraph (my contribution is the 3rd from the top). Where else but the blogosphere would I get to hang out with an army of vegan women?

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