Tag: Fail

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Not to be too Alanis Morissette, but isn’t it Ironic Chicago is beefing up police coverage?

DNC 640x480.After all, why would a bastion of the Democrat party, its supporters, and its policies, in a deep blue state like Chicago need police protection?

Haven’t the Democrats championed defunding the police? Aren’t they confident that if left alone, crime will drop all on its own?

Have they no faith in their own policies?

Who would even think about disrupting the DNC?

Oh yeah, apparently they’re worried about the pro Palestine movement. They might also be worried about the Trans-right movement because Walz hasn’t pumped his ass full of estrogen and cut his dick off in solidarity with them. It might be the BLM still trying to be relevant and get those reparations they think they deserve. Didn’t the Democrats promise reparations?

Really? They don’t see the irony?

They fed the BLM protests. They fed the anti police / defund the police movement. Now they’re bringing LEO in from all over the state to assist with crowd control and local businesses have warned their employees to stay home for their own safety. Those same businesses are boarding up their windows because of the anticipated violence.

Ironically, their own favored groups are the very groups likely to perpetrate the violence.

Mark my words, when the shit gets out of hand, (and it will,) the Democrat Party will claim there were MAGA supporters taunting the “mostly peaceful protestors” thereby inciting riots. They say this kind of shit all the time so it’s not like I’m a gifted prognosticator. It’s just they lie about everything and MAGA is their goto boogie man.

Ironically, the Democrats will prove Conservatives and supporters of law and order, correct, once again.

Perhaps the Democrat party should change their name to the Irony party.

Almost everything they champion comes back to spank them metaphorically and ironically.

At least then their party name would match the party experience.

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Apparently the Olympic opening ceremonies didn’t go well.

Wow!

Several X posts were reporting that the IOC is pulling down video and has filed DCMA requests for copies of the offensive videos to be taken down too.

The videos and photos I’ve seen are… Uh… well, awful!

There have even been messages on X from Parisians apologizing for the show. Think about that. Parisians NEVER apologize for anything!

There have been some really funny parody videos from Russia piling on the humiliation.

Generally, I don’t watch the Olympics. Seems like a lot of hype and not a lot of actual sport.

I don’t mean that to suggest that the Athletes aren’t the top in the world in their sport. It’s just that for an event that says all the athletes have to be amateur and unpaid. There’s a ton of money being made by everyone else.

Commercial after commercial, sponsors and commerce. Not to mention the cash the IOC rakes in. 

The Olympics could be considered a metaphor or commentary on the government citizen relations vis-à-vis taxation. The athletes do all the work, the IOC & TV networks reap the rewards. 

While I do think the photos and video clips I’ve seen of the opening ceremonies were pretty awful, I apparently wasn’t alone. I think that a large percentage of the backlash might simply be that world wide maybe people are sick to death of everything being Trans or whatever other victim class the TQIA2S+ mob can come up with.

Do what you want to your body, I don’t care. Sleep with whoever you want, I don’t care. Turn your bedroom into an orgy every night with as many people as you can stack in the space, I don’t care. But for God’s sake stop shoving it down my throat!

One good and faithful person was all I needed. He’s gone now, and I’m beyond disinterested in being dragged into some Trans drama of perpetual victimhood.

Full disclosure, over our decades together He and I both colored outside the lines on occasion. It wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t feel like we needed to advertise it. Had the right third person come along, we’d have been open to the possibility of a polyamorous situation.

The point is, none of this is new, different, or special. All of this is adult activity and has no place in front of children, nor does it need to be splashed into the living rooms of families across the planet.

That sentiment is coming from a gay man, who’s apparently not alone in that view. I could write a 2000 word piece on how annoyed, disgusted, and angry I am about the gay community being utterly destroyed by the TQIA2S+ mob. That is a piece for another time.

The TQIA2S+ mob has even taken over and devalued our once fun pride events. Oh, and we don’t need a freaking month of “Pride”. We used to have a lot of fun with just a couple of weekends.

It appears that the TQIA2S+ mob will not be content until they make everyone miserable enough to turn away from entertainment venues of every kind. They say this is about representation and inclusion, but clearly it’s not.

Honestly, I’m not represented or included. Nor is any straight person. I don’t like living in a fucking pride parade every day of the year.

I have to admit, they’ve done a fantastic job of eradicating the photos and videos as of this morning.

The damage is done. The controversy has been written about. It doesn’t matter if the photos are no longer available, the world saw that dumpster fire of an Olympic opening ceremony.

I was somewhat amazed that the costumes looked like a bad high school production of Hedwig & the Angry Inch or Rocky Horror Picture Show. With the money spent, I would have expected something that at least looked like they’d spent some time in costume design.

Perhaps it’s just me. Everything in the published photos looked cheap and tawdry.

I will say Lady Gaga carried off her costume well, I’ve seen no photos of Celine Dions performance. It’s a pity that the TQIA2S+ mob’s dumpster fire managed to overshadow their performances.

As I was reading through the posts on X I kept hearing Mallory Archer saying, “This is why we can’t have nice things.” Apparently the TQIA2S+ mob portion of the ceremonies did one thing the director claimed to want to do.

It united a broad swath of people in anger, disgust, and revulsion. So good job dude.

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Peak Narcisism! (What else would I expect from Actors?)

Joy Behar and trump 640x480.I’ve become fascinated by all the actors claiming they’re terrified about Donald Trump possibly becoming president again.

These people making claims that they’re afraid Trump is going to come after them because they spoke harshly to him, or about him, is so insane I’d believe they’re joking were it not for their follow-on comments.

Talk about a sense of self importance. If, and I mean IF Donald Trump becomes president again, he’s going to be so damn busy taking out the real trash in Washington D.C., fighting innumerable battles with filth and scum in Congress, The Department of Justice, the machine known as our Federal Government and all the corruption therein, that he’s not going to have time, much less any concern for a bunch of sniveling actors, that no-one expects any first rate thinking out of in the first place.

Everyone pretty much assumes that actors are vapid but pretty objects. The words they speak on stage are written for them, their movements to and fro, are directed by others, and were it not for the field of acting, these people would be selling their bodies on street corners.

There are very few actors that actually have a brain. Actors with brains usually demonstrate their intelligence with thoughtful well reasoned statements, and know when to keep their mouths shut about things they know nothing about. 

The latest, aside from Robert De Niro, and the harpies on The View, is Chrissy Teigen. Yeah I know, Chrissy who? I’ve never heard of her, don’t care that I’ve never heard of her and honestly wouldn’t miss her. I’m one of the unwashed masses that is supposed to hang on this persons every word. Apparently, I missed that memo.

These people are now, and will be, so far beneath Trump’s attention they’ve got nothing to fear.  Let’s face it, the very things these “Actors” say they’re afraid of are things we’ve seen their guy & his administration actually do.

In the case of The View, good golly, if ever there was a show that should be canceled it’s that horrific steaming pile of shit.

It’s not just that their opinion is different from mine. It’s that these women are out of their minds about Trump. I’d love to see what happened if the powers that be at the network and their sponsors took Trump off the table with these women. 

What would they talk about then? What, of any importance or relevance would they have to say?

I worry about being too political on this blog. The View has gone well beyond any lines I might have concerned myself with.

The funny thing is that The View, and all of these entertainers have done more to keep Trump in the public eye than if he’d spent millions on advertising.

Funnier still, is they’ve made Trump the underdog, and Americans love the underdog.

With everything they’ve done to attack him, they’ve failed to mortally wound him. Trump is becoming a hero. The guy that wouldn’t go down. The mouse flipping a finger at the big assed cat. 

These actors and the harpies on The View, might want to take a look at Kathy Griffin and the ruin that is her career.

Trump did nothing to her. She was always a third rate comedian. Now she’s washed up and cancelling shows due to poor ticket sales.

It wasn’t Trump, it was how the American People reacted to her. 

It’s not pretty. 

Then again, neither are a lot of these washed up entertainment folks.

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Fasinating how draining Twitter is…

At first it’s interesting. There’s a stream of “new” data and ideas.

You interact because some people are funny, and if you’re lonely you’re reaching out to other humans, trying to connect.

There are positive connections but generally they’re temporary. When they go away as they inevitably do, it hurts in a way. It’s not a major hurt but suddenly you’re unimportant in someone else’s life and you wonder if / what you did wrong that made them go away. What changed between this week and last week? Are they just busy, or did they find someone more interesting? With the possibility of thousands of followers all interacting or attempting to interact daily or hourly if you fall of the edge of the map it usually goes unnoticed.

This has the potential to make any loneliness a person may feel, much sharper. 

Some people will move on without paying much attention, after all, there are literally thousands of other people. Some people won’t notice, and others, those with few followers may be devastated.

Everyone is clamoring for attention “Pick Me, See Me, Talk to me”, and yet the satisfaction provided is not sustaining.

In my observations of the “Twitterverse” I’ve started to understand this and noticed a few other things too. 

Twitter has a lot of really shitty, stupid, and narcissistic people. I can only imagine what TikTok or other platforms are like.

For someone like me, seeing that level of stupid or meanness is super depressing. This is especially true when the Twitter Stream is like a broken sewer pipe of shit. It wouldn’t take me long based on a raw Twitter feed to decide that humanity needed to be nuked.

Even if Twitter represented only a fractional part of humanity, it’s pretty clear the species is doomed. Dropping nukes might be a mercy.

The fact that it’s monetized and you can apparently make reasonable money using Twitter, in some cases brings out the absolute worst in people.

The parody accounts are sometimes funny but in other cases are even more depressing because sometimes you’re transfixed by the sheer insanity. You’d never normally watch some of the shit, but it’s like watching an accident, you can’t look away. Then you have to try to unsee what you saw and are depressed about being pulled into it in the first place.

The “Free Energy” Twitter accounts are really depressing for someone like me. Time and time again, the “free energy” person has “figured out” how to make an electric motor.  Something that’s been known for 200 years or so. However, because apparently Science isn’t being taught in school anymore, these people think they’ve got something new. 

All the free energy people succeed in demonstrating is that a rather substantial part of humanity isn’t more than two steps away from seeking out an old crone to “cast the bones” about next years harvest.

That’s really depressing!

So much potential wasted, so many petty people, so much ignorance.

Much of which could be addressed and improved if sites like Twitter and the internet in general weren’t intellectual wastelands.

How many African American fights do I need to see happen in a fast food joint? How many weaves need to be snatched off a fat chicks head before any shame is felt?

Twitter and sites like it pander to the lowest common denominator. In doing so, they drag the rest of us down into the gutter.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Twitter is not healthy, not even a little bit.

I rather think that cigarette smoking is a healthier pursuit. 

I’m speaking of Twitter because I long ago gave up on FaceBook and all the rest. I have a twitter account and I’m considering deleting it. This is actually the second twitter account I’ve had. I’d forgotten why I deleted the first one. Now that I remember, do I delete this one too, or should I simply stop using it then check in only when someone sends me something from Twitter.

Yes, I know Twitter is called X now, but typing “X” in sentences play hell with auto correct and spelling subroutines.

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I think I’ve been going about this all wrong… Story of my life!

What, you might ask?

Well, my answer would be pretty much everything!

It seems that I’ve been giving away my knowledge when I should have been charging for every single bit of useful information that I know.

I’ve confirmed this only recently, but have suspected it for a while now. I chose however to live in denial, comforting myself by believing that what I knew, or had to say was of little to no value.

How did I come to this epiphany? 

That’s a slightly interesting tale. I was looking at starting a podcast. In the course of that investigation I was led to the more important question of how do I monetize a podcast. After all, I’d like to earn some cash…

The easiest ways are to charge a subscription fee, or come up with some advertisers. Okay, that makes sense, but as always the devil is in the details. To monetize, you’ve apparently got to use some payment processor like Stripe, Venmo, or Square. Each of these folks take a % and often they add a flat fee too.

Some transaction processors will charge 2.9%+0.30 per credit card transaction. Wow! I should start a processing center!

If my math is correct that works out to about 0.33 per dollar. Meaning that if you charged a dollar for a subscription you’re only getting  0.67. By the way, that doesn’t account for normal taxation Federal and State which works out to about 30%. So in the end you, the person actually doing the work, end up with about 0.47 of every dollar you make.

But wait! There’s more! A podcast requires specialized hosting services, Figure around $20 a month, So before you’ve gotten your first subscription you’re already in the hole $240 just for a year of podcasting hosting services. It’s better to purchase a year than to pay month to month because that’s about 3% higher.

Some of the podcasting directories which typically are not hosting services may add even more fees. Apple for example might charge 30% if someone subscribes to your podcast via their podcast application. So that immense wealth of 0.47 you’ve made may get whittled down again to 0.17 of every dollar.

That depends on how Apple takes their 30%. I’m assuming they’re going to take it right off the top at 30% per dollar, because… They’re Apple! Then the payment processors may also take their fee on the original transaction amount and so on. I could see a scenario where the person doing to podcasting ends up losing money on subscriptions.

Amazing!

So all these podcasters absolutely have to come up with additional sources of income besides subscriptions and at the same time have to produce content that is entertaining enough that the listener count is pretty high for the podcast to be worth an advertisers time.

Don’t get me wrong, pennies add up, but as the pennies add up, so too do the taxes and fees.

I’m going to keep looking for a combination of systems that net the largest potential amount of $$ in my pocket. Now I know why some of the popular podcasts have commercials for something every 6 minutes.

This made me think, “How long have I been writing my blog?” All that time with no subscriptions, 13 -14 years? I should have been selling advertising space, and figuring a way to create more engagement. I thought it was a labor of love and that people would enjoy it on its own merit. Some have and to those loyal followers you have my profound thanks. 

I realize that Blogging, Podcasting, & Social Media engagement are all potential income streams. Now I begin to understand the difference between me & folks that have been doing these things for a while. They know or believe in their value. For them, engaging in these things are actually a business and they charge for their time one way or another.

I’ve never had that kind of faith in myself, or that what I brought to the table was worth a damn. To some degree, I think that is a function of a career in corporate America. After 20 or 30 years of shitty bosses, policies, and being ground under someone’s heel it’s tough to believe you have any value, especially when you’re thrown away on a whim in layoffs, or when you or your department are pawns between to executives settling old scores.

Corporate America’s mistreatment is not the only reason I never had faith in myself, but they sure helped cement my lack of faith in myself.

This year because of that lack of faith in myself,  I almost terminated my blog and my web hosting entirely. Part of my reasoning  was because instead of charging a reasonable fee for 3 years as they had done in years past the hosting service wanted almost $1000.00.

I’m not going to do that. I renewed for one year and am in the process of comparison shopping for a new web hosting service. The current company I’ve been using for years, maybe 13, has relocated their help services to the Philippines. They’ve made changes to the web control panels and their billing panels which have made the service far more difficult to use, and to top it all off, They’ve decided that I don’t need to see invoices or have the ability to look at past invoices.

So, the cost of my narcissism in terms of cash and annoyance to maintain has exceeded my ego’s ability to justify. That being said, I’ve got an organization that I’ve been providing hosting for, and moving my stuff and theirs would have been a Royal pain in the ass. So I’ll wait until they find a new host and someone to do their web site. I’ve got a year to plan and handle the move.

All of this kind of underscores the fundamental truth.

I have not been valuing myself. I’ve been giving away too much of myself in various forms, for free, for years.

Jerry had it all over me in that regard. He knew what to charge. He was often not charging the full price he could get, but at least he was charging more or less fairly for his services. To be fair, he’d charge more for weddings and he almost never discounted them.

He knew he was going to have to deal with a monster bride or worse, the bride’s mother! He really could take or leave a wedding. He once said that playing funerals was more satisfying because he wasn’t going to hear the deceased bitching & complaining, trying the wheedle a discount after services had been rendered, when it came time to write the check.

I saw him on multiple occasions tell a bride he was refunding the deposit because the whole wedding had become such a pain in his ass the price he was charging was insufficient. He hated outdoor weddings, especially those in the Palm Springs area. Oh, they paid pretty well, but often the bride would expect the musicians to be sitting with their instruments in the blazing sun and gusting wind blowing sheet music all over the place.

Hint to any soon to be brides… Put the musicians under an awning. Acoustic instruments don’t like sitting in scorching sun for hours. They tend to fall out of tune when heated. The musicians are also none too pleased to be sitting in formal attire usually black out in the desert sun. Jerry would say I know that it’s the Bride’s special day, but she doesn’t have to make it literally hell on earth for everyone else.

Jerry was on the verge of putting a clause in wedding contracts that charged for broken harp strings incurred at an outdoor wedding. One of the last Palm Springs weddings he played, due to the heat, humidity, and lack of awning or any shade he broke 9 strings on the big harp.

In addition to him having to remap the music in his head avoiding the notes that he couldn’t play with broken strings, while he was playing, the cost of replacement strings almost wiped out the fee he charged for the wedding.

I wish I’d had more confidence in myself. I could have learned a lot more about putting myself “out there” from Jerry. I tried to handle all the technical stuff and let him be a Musician. Now that he’s gone, I’ve got a lot of technology laying around and I’m wondering if I should sell it, or do I have enough of value to say, that putting the tech to work could turn into a profitable enterprise?

I put together a prototype podcast episode just to see if I could. I liked the result, and the one person I’ve shared it with liked the effort as a first step.

That same person has floated the question of having fun in a podcast in the flavor of the old Mystery Science Theater TV show. That show hearkened back to earlier SciFi shows on Friday Nights or Saturday Afternoons. One of the most famous was “Elvira Mistress of the Dark”

Depending on subject matter, that could be fun to do and perhaps entertaining to listen to.

I’ve got a leg up because I already own the audio tech, so if I push forward into podcasting, the investment would be pretty close to zero. Although the technology for producing voice tracks has become dirt simple and cheap. A lot of the audio gear I have laying around may be overkill now.

There are USB mics that have a shit ton of intelligence built in. If you add some decent audio processing software, it’s as simple as just having a computer, one of these mics and you’re going to produce high quality results by default.

Some of the podcasting hosts have the recording software on the server side of the equation. That means that your computer doesn’t have to be terribly powerful, all it has to be able to do is get the audio stream to the hosting server. Then all the processing is done there. Thinking about that, I suppose you could do a podcast from a dang phone with zero investment in equipment at all.

Jerry and I had been looking into “Smart” Mics. During COVID Jerry was doing a ton of Zoom sessions. He was using a borrowed USB mic to capture the harp music. Eventually, he started using the USB mic all the time because it did a fine job and could be powered by his iPad and / or his computer.

There’s one of those kinds of mics that I’ve considered. I was thinking more toward working from home and knowing that I’d have to deal with conference calls. This particular mic also works on video game consoles. Those were my original use cases. But if I were to find a suitable podcast host, subject matter, and start podcasting too. It might be a win all around.