Mar 30
AndrewHumor, Life in Digital Branding, Fame, satire
Dying for fame? Dreaming of riches? Want to be among the social elite? That is so last century. This century it’s all about branding. Your brand name is your fame, it’s your privacy policy, your public profile, your media spin. Most of us have nothing to offer but ourselves. You think you’re special, and damnit, it’s about time you start proving it to the world. Start selling yourself today and make your mark tomorrow. And remember, you only have yourself to brand! Get started with…
Step 1: You ain’t got a name, you ain’t got a life
Name is everything in branding. It becomes the way people recognize you, something that distinguishes you from the rest. You can use your real name, a variation of your real name or make some shit up, but if it’s not memorable, you’re already dead in the water.
The savviest individuals sass up their name with just enough vroom to catch people’s attention. So throw away Miss Sally and call yourself Miss Salle! Your brand name should roll off the tongue and stick in their throats. It should blaze on paper and sound like the coming of the new dawn through the microphone.
Step 2: Become an e-medium
Remember, you’re selling yourself, not some product, not a book you wrote or a t-shirt you designed. You are selling you. And these days, you’re nothing without your network. Spread the word through every conceivable form of electronic medium known to man. Never heard of twitter? You’re six months behind. Not on facebook? That was two years ago. MySpace? Four. Haven’t bought your own website? Ten years ago, the best were already putting their stamp on the internet with their brand.
Go now and buy the damn website with your brand name on it. Already taken? Buy a different. Make it short, clever and spell it right. Don’t know what to put on it? Leave it blank then, but do not, whatever you do, leave it out there for someone else to snatch up.
Step 3: Do it Stupid
People win over fans by making themselves out to be total asses. Your brand name succeeds when you’re the biggest ass on the planet. Don’t be a wuss. Your brand is driven by your ability to do something totally bullshit and then film it and put it on YouTube. That’s how people know that for that one precious moment, you were the king of total assholes. They won’t even remember what you did, only that you were the mofo that did it.
And get on it because people are doing stupider and stupider shit all the time. Pretty soon we’re gonna run out of stupid shit to do and then you’ll be stuck a nobody. Is that what you want!
Step 4: Beat It
Branding helps you carry the momentum of your accomplishment into the future. It’s the hook that keeps people back for more. Everyone is forgotten. All your accomplishments are for nothing 15 minutes later. But damnit, your brand can live on forever. Put it all over the web, spread it through the hot fingers of your friends and people you’ve never met who will obsess about you. Take pictures.
Remember, they aren’t forwarding just a YouTube clip, they are sending your brand all over the internet, spreading it like butter on bread. And the way to keep it up is to beat it into the ground. Twitter yourself into a frenzy, tag yourself in photos on facebook. Make a blog, start a photo album, add another video clip. Do whatever it takes to feed more of yourself into the world wide web until we are stuffed so full all we shit out is you.
You can’t ever let up! You can do it. The minute you stop, the minute you rest on your reputation, the minute you take a breather, you risk ruin unless your brand can carry you through to the next triumph. Only through the power of branding can you sell forever the one commodity that you actually have to offer the world…that commodity is you and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Mar 26
SquidHumor, Relationships dating
I’ve never been great at picking guys who are ‘good on paper.’ Despite my two very expensive degrees from a reputable university, I’ve never dated someone who has put in more than a few semesters of community college. Despite the fact that I’ve been pretty much on my own since 18, I’ve dated many, many men who still live at home and whose mothers still do their cooking, dishes, and laundry. While I often spend summer evenings enjoying a bottle of wine and a good book in my backyard surrounded by my potted plants, I generally date men who would rather be playing Xbox with a six-pack of PBR in their parents’ basement.
Select friends tell me that my choice in men is a reflection of my being white trash (which, for the record, I am not). I’ve gone out with men who are ‘good on paper-’ who grew up in Connecticut, went to Ivy League universities, and are given lucrative stock options at their corporate firms… but these guys just aren’t my cup of tea. I mean, I’m the child of a foul-mouthed cop who always had a case of Bud in the fridge and a pack of Marlboro reds in his pocket… I can’t bring any-old pansy-ass home to mom and dad, and I wouldn’t want to.
Admittedly, when it came time for college, I packed up and moved away from my hometown to live in the city, and I do have quite the collection of designer clothes (from Filene’s Basement and Marshall’s, of course), and I do enjoy an al fresco Sunday brunch on Newbury Street or a night at the theatre… but that doesn’t mean that I want to date, in the words of the Governator, a ‘girly-man’ who does the same. I would much rather a man who can pinpoint the strange noise that my car is making, who can build a shelving unit for my books, and who wants to throw back a few pints after we do some yard work on a Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps when I hit my thirties my priorities will have shifted and I will be looking for a man who can’t take one hand off his blackberry to take his suit off and f*ck me, but for now, I’ll be at the neighborhood bars looking for every unshaven, Guinness-breathed, Boston-accented mechanic, carpenter, and state DOT worker who will mow my lawn and give it to me good once he’s already worked up a sweat.
Mar 25
AndrewHumor Food
Lunch today was chicken noodle soup. It was a small victory since soup options run the gamut of enjoyable to acceptable to downright tragic.
I have become something of an expert at quickly identifying a soup that will satisfy. I can look at the surface of a pot of soup and know instantly whether it will ever touch my lips. Sometimes, I can even tell just by the name. Here’s a pop quiz, see if you guess which flavors of soup would ever fill my gullet:
1) Corn chowder
2) Baked fisherman’s chowder
3) Southwest bbq chicken soup
(1=oh god 2=oh good god 3=not if you paid me)
Usually, soups are a good option for lunch and I can find something in one of the two large vats at the end of the salad cart that does not look regurgitated. True, sometimes the options are between “death in a soup bowl” otherwise known as Manhattan clam chowder and “yesterday’s overcooked leeks floating in a miasma of goop” otherwise known as Italian wedding soup. Other times though, it’s rich beef barley versus vegetable medley (though I’m not a vegetarian, I can usually survive the vegetable medley because everything tends to fuse together and become an almost meat-like symbiote not unlike all things soy).
I’m fond of the chicken noodle soup because I think it’s two primary ingredients are hard to mess up. It does require that one explore to the bottom to find pieces of chicken, spiral noodles, mushy carrots and the occasional celery bit. Though it’s not quite the most flavorific soup ever (nor for that matter, the warmest), considering its institutional origins, I am usually pleased. In fact, today the chicken pieces were quite hearty, another surprise, since there is really no sensation in your mouth like overcooked, sloppy wet chicken globs.
Every week, at least one suspicious flavor shows up on the menu. The dining commons tends to cover up deficiencies in their mass soup cooking methods by using generous amounts of pepper which end up floating along the top of the soup like vagrant seaweed. So imagine my surprise when I see on the menu “pepperpot soup” which is, what exactly? Broth and pepper? That’s pretty much like serving like serving a slice of buttermilk bread and calling it bread and butter because it was baked with margarine. Then one day, I see this prime option: chicken double noodle soup. So to disguise the lack of chicken, we’re doubling up on the amount of noodles. No one is fooled.
The non-vegetarian option soup choice is too often just yesterday’s leftovers in broth. (Hello, Caribbean jerk chicken soup. Really?) Plus, I think the vegetarians are screwed on an almost daily basis. The cream of mushroom soup is a cop out. I’m not wild about the dijon wild mushroom dill soup because too much of it gets in your teeth. And if you think you can’t go wrong with split pea soup (classic!) I would recommend you rethink it. Or try it yourself. I’m pretty sure soup is supposed to stain your teeth green.
Fortunately, at least once a week there is something simple (chicken noodle or beef noodle) to sooth over the rough spots (is it clam bisque or an opportunity to make full use of your health insurance with an emergency room visit?) Any time I can score a soup that runs from edible to hey this is almost decent, I consider it a small victory. And if I’m on top of my game, I run, run, run far away from the rest.
Mar 20
AndrewHumor
Good Lord, I have been needy this week. A mix of work stress, sexual frustration and a few untimely happenstances of the social variety, and I just have been emotionally vomiting for days. I’m in need of a little therapy.
When I have a week that just lingers on, I always fantasize about starting over from scratch. This is virtually impossible to do, seeing as how traveling back in time hasn’t been reliably invented yet. I suppose you could bash yourself on the side of the head and try to induce amnesia, but if it doesn’t work, then all you really have is a new memory of hitting yourself on the side of the head and the subsequent pain that follows.
It’s a bit like rebooting your computer, right? You need to sever the connection to the emotional fodder and reestablish your core programming. I think most people, besides looking for physical release as a way of dealing with stress, shed emotional layers through a reductive amnesia. There is an art to eliminating the complications of everyday living, thereby no longer being bothered by the simple stuff that remains.
My skill at it comes and goes, so it’s not always the ideal solution for me. Instead, I’m the kind of person that needs to say the things that are on my mind. The act of talking out the issues helps me to set them aside permanently.
But occasionally it happens that the very act of venting hasn’t worked because the problems I faced up to are not what’s really at issue. That’s how this week has gone anyway. So I talk out and talk out these so-called emotional malfunctions, only to find out that I’m circumventing the real concerns. I’m still walking around with a foul cloud around my head, a bit like an orbiting lighthouse, warning away the unwary.
What’s a guy to do? Forced seclusion? Run away? Or feign amnesia?
Oh yeah, I’m going to pretend this week never happened. Which means, the end.
Man I’m feeling good about this one. Put a smile on my face, throw my hands up in the air and when my friends ask me, “So did your week get any better?” you know what I’m gonna answer?
“It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Mar 11
JeremyHumor, Relationships porn, sexuality, watchmen
Question:
Dear Ask Daily,
Why are straight men so into lesbian porn? I mean, what’s the deal with that? Is it some kind of lesbian conversion fantasy or what?
-Inquiring Minds Want to Know
Answer:
Dear Inquiring Minds,
One of my friends, a heterosexual male, was describing the new movie Watchmen to me a few days ago. His biggest commentary on it, other than the awesome violence, was that there was waaaaaay too much male full frontal for his liking, accompanied by physical shuddering, etc. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a comment like this. Hence, I can come up with only two hypotheses regarding the impact of the sight of the male generative organ on men: it makes them feel inadequate or it makes them gay.
So far, we’re not even talking porn here. But imagine, if straight guys get this upset about a bit of penis on the big screen, a constant barrage of it on their TV screen (or, more likely, computer screen) has got to be panic inducing. It raises all kinds of questions in the male mind, such as “Does my girlfriend want me to be that big? Cuz seriously, I’m not even half that size” or “If I get turned on watching this, does that mean I’m gay? I mean, yeah, there’s the girl, too, but I’m seeing his man parts and I’m enjoying myself!” Consequently, thoughts like these can only negatively impact the man’s performance in the bedroom. When he suddenly can’t get it up with his girlfriend, he then starts to convince himself that he IS gay and then he feels inadequate because he has no fashion sense and doesn’t know the words to any ABBA songs.
So how does all this relate to your question? Clearly, this sexual insecurity about, or even fear of, the penis expresses itself in the desire to watch girl-on-girl action, in which the only competition is a clearly fake strap on. Lesbian porn takes away the threat for straight men.
However, this doesn’t begin to explain all those lesbians who purportedly get off on guy-on-guy action.
Feb 03
JeremyHumor
Question:
Dear Ask Daily,
I’m concerned that my son has a secret girlfriend. My 17 year old son has been very secretive with me lately, recently he has started to refuse to go to church with the family and tonight when I was going through his room I found a magazine with naked men in it. He obviously has a girlfriend that he is hiding from me that brought that magazine into my home and I am afraid they are having intercourse and I am greatly concerned that he is going to get her pregnant. What should I do about this?
-A Concerned Parent
Answer:
Dear Concerned Parent,
Well, this experience should teach you a lesson about snooping. Your son is seventeen, so it’s time he transitions to a bit of adult responsibility, which includes a right to some privacy. You should just forget all about finding that magazine in your son’s room. This should not be a problem for you, as you already appear adept at ignoring things.
If memory serves, last year, you wrote me because you were having separation anxiety with all the weekend camping trips your son was taking with his Scout leader. You were also concerned that despite all this extra attention, he didn’t seem to be earning any merit badges. And the year before that, it was something about music. Ahh, here’s the old letter.
“My son has wonderful taste in music. He doesn’t listen to the garbage that most kids do nowadays. He plays all the big old Broadway musicals. Sometimes, he even dresses up and acts them out for us. He does a wonderful ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and the gingham dress fits him perfectly! But he plays them so loud, especially when he and the other boys are in his bedroom. How can I get him to turn the music down?”
Concerned Parent, you can count on this: your son won’t be knocking up any girlfriend any time soon. Just to be sure, though, you might want to encourage him to attend college far away from home. Maybe NYU or UC-Berkeley. Or a nice art school. As for getting him back to church, perhaps a different congregation might interest him more. That nice Unitarian Universalist church with the pretty rainbow on the sign, for example, might be just the thing.
Forever Yours,
Ask Daily
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