You want to see a man on his knees?

It really is impossible to be anything but a pitchman in this world. Like Adam Smith said, "We are a nation of shopkeepers."


April, 29, 2010

Re: Freelance copywriting position

I’m very interested in the web content writer/SEO specialist opening. I produced copy as an in house content writer for a start up company in Los Angeles where I was responsible for all the content for a number of web sites and products. My responsibilities included customizing the eBay store content, managing our Overture PPC campaign to optimize the sites for keywords, compose the emails, press releases and affiliate marketing material as well as phone sales and affiliate revenue account management. Because the site technician, the graphic editor and the owners were also in house we worked closely as a team to grow the business. The company I worked for was short lived as it invested in fad products like pocketbikes, helium filled hoverdiscs, hovercopters and digidraw toys so the domain names are no longer active. But here they are anyway:

www.scooterselection.com

www.hoverdiscstore.com

www.digidrawcenter.com

www.hovercopterweb.com

I am a creative writer and my specialty is entertaining copy. I recognize and appreciate the balance that must be reached between readability and keyword placement on e-commerce sites. I approach ad copy like a research project. What is the demographic of the audience? What are the product’s features? What are the major selling points? What’s the clearest way I can communicate the allure of the product? Whenever possible I took the products home and familiarized myself with them so I could write from an informed perspective. I rode the razor scooters around the parking lot so I could write product specific copy. Then I added buzzwords, action verbs and loads of search terms strategically placed and boldfaced. Most product copy on the web is generic or comes from the manufacturer. My copy is never generic and we had to force several competitors to discontinue the use of my copy when we found them using it. I still occasionally see my copy on an eBay ad though the products we sold are mostly discontinued.

I am a diverse writer whose imagination is limitless. I can turn any product, service, event or cause into Internet gold. With a clear keyword and strategy the content I write is guaranteed to drive traffic to the site and inform and entertain readers once they get there. I was trained to write press releases by the now deceased Rolling Stones journalist Patrick William Salvo in Los Angeles, who was trained by L. Ron Hubbard. While I am not a Scientologist, the influence strategy made an impact on me. Patrick Salvo asked me to look for the life and death drama in any assignment from a Chiropractor to a Charity Marathon, and lead with that to transform information into news.

The workflow process we used for the websites allowed me to write simple text with html and paste the text into an online inventory database field that updated the online content. I own Dreamweaver if more advanced html is required.

I graduated with a degree in English and Music from Humboldt State University and have explored many occupations such as electronic engineering to motorcycle repair and have traveled extensively in my quest for education. My love of learning and my ability to reveal the story behind the story are what sets me apart from other writers. What I bring to a writing project cannot be replaced with a few hours of online research. I have unique life experiences that enrich my writing with a tone of authority and authenticity you’ll not find elsewhere. My priority is always the needs of the customer and I look forward to using my diverse skills to provide all your website and press release needs.


Sincerely,
Oggy Bleacher

Any Port in a Storm

I was wandering around today and stopped at the Ice House in New Castle and pondered getting something called a "Double Jeopardy" which is a ice cream frappe covered in chocolate syrup and fudge and whipped cream. It's basically an ice cream sundae on top of a frappe. It cost $6 so I I decided I should just get an ice cream cone, maybe moosetracks ice cream...but I wasn't really hungry for ice cream so I thought that I should get a hot dog but I didn't want to bother asking for it. So I backed out and went to Fort Stark. I was only looking for some comfort through sugar and lately sugar has been wreaking havoc with my metabolism, leaving me drowsy and slurring my speech. I've been tested for Diabetes and that's not the problem. My tolerance has shifted.
I went back to Fort Stark to search for clues. I'm not the first person to walk these sandy shores. What motivated those before me? I think I will do an entire photo series at Fort Stark. The air quality was absolutely perfect today even though it was cold and windy. Yes, I will return to Fort Stark and take a whole bunch of pictures. There are so many things about that place that hold memories of mine. And maybe in the process I will find some kind of peace.




One good thing about Fort Stark is that the place is deserted. It's public land but the nearby property owners must have some arrangement so the gates are locked and no one can park there...and there are no signs saying "Fort Stark 1 mile". I can see their point since Ordione Point is like one minute away and has many more nice features like swings and a playing field and it doesn't require me driving past their tennis courts to get to. But Fort Stark is a beautiful, haunting place and for 25 years I've played there and had pictures taken of me there and taken pictures of other people there and it's time I devote a whole day. I've got to borrow a real camera though because this Kodak thing has limits. Then I can put them all online and look at them in the winter when I'm in Mexico.
I'll have to take the moped out there but that'll be a good test of the new engine.

Is it me?

I woke up today to the liberal morning talk show rantings of NHPR. It sounded completely insane. Has the country fallen apart overnight? They were talking about things like late term abortions, torture, genocide, assisted suicide, concentration camps in Arizona, health care, etc.
It was laughable. No way to wake up. I've been slowly reading about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations...which is boring me to death, but apparently since 1750 at least there has been almost no progress on the affairs of men. The exact same issues between government and people were a major concern in Smith's time. It's safe to say where there is a government there will be a pundit. And where there is a pundit there will be people talking about that pundit as though they aren't pundits but really they are. We all are. The size of the government, the influence of the American government, the over all power of the government is really Unamerican. If I weren't American I'd say this can't be a democracy. It's a democracy on paper, but it's like calling Wal-Mart a neighborhood bakery because there is a bakery and it is in the same state as a neighborhood. We've got a government that basically rules every fragment of our lives and no one is happy about it. If we weren't all living so well I'd call it a disaster. It's really only a disaster if a) you care about individual responsibility. b) you live in a country other than America.

I'm turning over a new leaf today. I'm going to really work at living like the poor uneducated person that I am. No more delusion. I'm not going to be prejudiced against the rich anymore. I have an idea of where that trait came from but I've had enough time to purge it and have failed so far. Let's just say that in the debate of nurture and nature I'm seeing a lot of evidence for nurture being the major factor. All you parents out there keep that in mind.

Today's sermon-
I planted trees for a winter and these tree saplings were 7 inches tall and I'd plant one every three seconds. I think I planted half a million. Anyway, you plant a sapling perfectly straight because if it is slightly angled it will take years to right itself. Just a bit extra attention to planting it straight will make the tree's life SO MUCH EASIER. But if you intentionally and willingly plant a tree on a completely skewed angle and also hide it in the shade or piss on it and leave a shovel lying on it for years then it's a miracle if the thing grows at all. The tree itself has a very good chance of surviving, unless you totally ignore your responsibilities and abuse and neglect it. IF you abuse it then you shouldn't be planting trees. That's pretty obvious. But, guess what? This isn't about trees.

The headlines are alarmist and the talk shows are even worse. It's hard to pretend we aren't on the eve of destruction. Americans are living what is called a "Five Planet Lifestyle" that is, it would take 5 earths to support us. The way we manage to survive is by taking the difference from other countries. We justify this by demonstrating how technologically advanced we are. Look how small our phones are! Yes, the cataclysms we are causing are mostly hidden from us by the media and it probably wouldn't matter if we did know about them. Go to a KFC buffet sometime and watch people pig out. If the extra crispy vat is empty they just wait for it to get filled up again. They don't think "Hey, did I eat too much?" ha.
We can ignore the problems because they will likely not cause much of a problem in our lifetimes but the problems we're passing on are going to take absolute genius to fix. Hell, we can't even define the problems yet and someone is going to have to solve them eventually.

I'm taking advice from Michael Jackson and starting with the man in the mirror. With that in mind here's the video:

Sexy New Features

I'd like to point out some added features to the blog. The previous left sidebar was my own creation that required me to go into the html template every time I wanted to add something. It was tedious and I didn't really grasp that blogger had thought this out before me and had these features that were much simpler to add and move things around. I figured the live blog feeds were one of these features and when I added them the whole house of cards collapsed and my rigged sidebar could not accommodate the new blog feeds.

So, I had to redesign everything within the parameters Blogger expects me to use. And here is the new look. It's basically the same thing except you can now view the updated posts of the blogs I've followed. See? So you don't have to go look at those blogs to find out if something has been updated. You can just glance at the sidebar. I think this is also possible with my own blog but it all depends on the site you use.

I wish it would give a taste of the actual post but it only shows the title so we all must be be mindful to write interesting titles to get people to check it out. For instance, I just changed the title of this post from "New Features" to "Sexy New Features" because I know sex sells. Also, I've included a live blog feed from the Adult Services in Los Angeles for some titillating content to counteract my depressing, pitiful, poisonous rants.
I will bet that among all of those links I've got there everyone is going to skip over the ones from transforming cultures and either pick the ones from the Onion or from the Adult Services. This just shows that the title is very important. Like, are you going to click on a link for "Man reduces impact on environment using cat poop" or "I'm Horny and beautiful. Come play with me."? I've added Google Analytics to the site so I will know exactly which gets more hits.

I've also started a creative venture with an Adopt the Hobo and a ghost letter writing project. These are stand alone pages that can now be found below the header. Desperate times...etc.

Let me break down the changes in bullet form:
*Live Blog Feeds
*Easier to read sexy font
*New Adopt a Hobo Page (Guess who the first hobo is?)
*Purchase Oggy's Book through Paypal
*Option to Subscribe (or publicly announce you do so)
*Since no one looks at my old posts I've relegated them to the bottom of the page.
*Same old ranting

Any questions or comments may be posted below in the same old boring comment field.

Avalanche

Is it futile to resist the avalanche of information, Oggy ponders, is it more important to maintain one's autonomy? It would be easier to succumb, to surrender, technically speaking since the moral evolution would take longer, but suppose he could just switch off the counterculture part of his brain and ignore the philosophical implications of his actions and the actions of the street sweepers of Santa Cruz or the lifeguards and doctors. This is a zoo, Oggy decides as he adjusts his wool poncho to better protect his hands from the biting Pacific wind and rain that has been lashing the coast for three days and night. A zoo with no zookeeper. Or are the zookeepers our own ethical DNA, which monitor the fences and meal times of our inner chimp? Oggy watches a first shift line cook dump a bag of trash in a dumpster and sees two scrawny Tweakers dressed in black move from the shadows of an alley to scavenge for food scrapes. There is a place to put the trash and so we create trash. But if we had unlimited amount of space then would it be justified still? Is it the limitations of space that is the problem or is there a bigger question to answer? Oggy's instincts are that a dichotomy is the answer, yes, and yes. Yes, the limitation of space is the problem. Solve that problem either with neutral waste or a bigger dump, but there is also a bigger question. Suppose mankind could jettison its waste into space. That's big enough, technically, to receive the physical waste of man without testing the limitations. Oggy has no problem accepting this assumption. Yes, the universe is big enough for the waste of man.

Oggy slows his bicycle down at a stop sign with a combination of both brakes and dragging his one good foot on the pavement. His poncho momentarily gets caught in the space between the wheel and the brakes and tugs him backwards but he stops in time and pulls the poncho out and tucks it into the hemp twine that is his belt. Yes, the universe is big enough but is that a free edict for the creation of as much waste as possible. Is there no greater responsibility to resources than space to put the trash? Money, the only globally recognized symbol of economy, keeps the shopkeepers attuned to every nut and bolt, but only because it costs money to waste. Is it not theoretically possible that waste will one day cost so little as to be negligible? Isn't that the goal of all shopkeepers? To make waste economically? Is it also not the goal of a consumer economy to produce more than is needed and is that not a matter of ethics? Oggy takes a small scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and scrawls, "Note to mayor - The culture itself is flawed."

There is no one coming at the intersection and Oggy equates his obedience to the traffic law that demands he stop at a stop sign to the larger ethical question of economy, using what is needed in principle, and not because there is space to put trash. Oggy stops in principle because that is the law and he is not a reckless citizen. But the question Oggy has to ask is if the reckless use of resources transcends law. It is legal, but it is also morally weighted. Oggy feels that if actions such as where you put carrot trimmings or, as the crank junkies are now finding out, where you put day old bread, are not tied inextricably to a moral reference point then the meaning of life is threatened. What is our function if not to answer these questions? Are we merely shopkeepers on our way to the next cup of coffee? Is that enough? Because extrapolated to the extreme terminus whether we stop at a traffic sign or don't stop is an indicator of the strength of our moral fabric.

A car honks behind Oggy. The drive has to honk twice before Oggy responds and makes a gesture of apology before rolling his bike into motion and allowing the car to pass him. What is our purpose here?