Author Archives: Shark

How to blog successfully

Old School blogging starts at an early age!

If I had a penny for every time somebody asked me:  “Shark, how do you become a successful blogger?”  I’d be a successful blogger!  The truth of the matter is that there’s no real formula for success except a lot of patience and hard work.  Sure, you could become an instant hit on the internet, like Charlie Sheen’s Twitter account, but those kind of success stories are few and far between.

My observation on how to become a successful blogger is as follows:

  • CONTENT, CONTENT AND MORE CONTENT.  Like a real estate agent espousing the famous quip, “location, location, location,” so too does a blogger need content, content, and content.  I should add “relevant” to the front of that.  Most successful blogs on the internet have interesting content, whether that be a political pundit writing about the coming collapse of Medicare, or somebody taking pictures of famous celebrities and using Microsoft Paint to draw funny faces on them; either way, these blogs are visited because people enjoy the content.
  • POST EVERY DAY.  There’s nothing worse than visiting an interesting blog and seeing that it hasn’t been updated since 2007 or something like that.  This is a real tragedy if the blogger’s archive contains golden nuggets of wisdom and social commentary.  It almost makes you mad to find a brilliant mind that stopped producing.  Granted, the blogger might have died, but if he or she just stopped updating their blog, I wish they would either post something to that effect, or just delete their blog altogether.  That reminds me, I have several blogs I need to delete, my bad.
  • HAVE MULTIPLE CONTRIBUTORS.  The reason why this blog is destined for success, I hope, is the fact that we have a variety of contributors with differing thoughts, styles, and opinions.  In fact, if you came to this blog and didn’t notice that we were different people, you’d think the blogger had a multiple personality disorder or at least ADD or OCD.  What other person would write about Texas Tater Twisters one day and post poetry about a well the next?  Having multiple contributors also ensures that the content is varied, and takes the stress off one person having to post every day.  It really is hard coming up with fresh things, and with multiple contributors I can take a breather knowing that somebody will post and keep the blog rolling.  It’s very comforting to know that.
  • VISIT OTHER BLOGS.  A successful blogger is a voracious reader of other blogs.  Reading what other people are writing about helps you to formulate ideas of your own.  This is particularly useful if you are suffering from writer’s block.  When visiting other people’s blogs it’s also important to leave commentary.  It’s not only polite, but the blogger gets a real sense of accomplishment from knowing that somebody actually took the time to read what they had posted.  Leaving commentary also means that some people might read your comment and click on your link back to your blog.  I don’t know how many times I’ve found a great blog just by reading the excellent commentary left on somebody’s blog and following the commentator back to their blog.
  • BE PROACTIVE.  This follows what I previously posted about commentary.  Be out there in cyberspace, join forums, link clubs, chat, post and be proactive.  Nobody is going to find your blog unless you make yourself heard, or you utilize excellent tag lines or eye-catching topic titles.  Twitter is also a great place to get new followers fast, but be prepared for a possible spam storm or an information overload.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your blog!

AmericaFTW!: Baconnaise

At first I didn’t think this was even real, but it turns out that it is.  If there is one thing Americans are good at, it’s combining things, like hunting and drinking beer, peanut butter and jelly, or bacon and mayonnaise!  Om nom, nom!  And it’s Kosher too for our Jewish friends and family.  So, my fellow Americans, go out and buy yourself a jar of Baconnaise, your mouth will thank you!

AmericaFTW!: Texas Tater Twisters

My friends, as a newly-minted Americano, I bring to you yet another exciting series: AmericaFTW! AmericaFTW! will feature people, things, food, and stories that are uniquely American. People Europeans Russians Asians Asshats love to make fun of Americans and our culture, but little do they know that we have one of the longest running democracies, and we also rock!
Anyhow, today’s entry is a culinary delight from my YouTube friend Hilah Cooking!

America: The Greatest Show in the World

We Americans love a good show.  Little do we know that we are actually part of the show now.  Other people from around the world are watching our slow decline into a Third World nation.  While we are busy arguing about the “big issues” like abortion, gay marriage, and evolution; our roads are being unpaved, we are becoming poorer, and more stupid.  As the old Carl Sagan remarked in his book, Cosmos, we have more astrologists and psychics than astronomers.  And why wouldn’t we, after all, astronomy requires serious thinking?  Better to go with the gut feeling of an astrologist.

Just look at your newspaper, one-third of the newspaper is comprised of the sports pages these days!  In fact, there’s more sports coverage than foreign news coverage!  A whole page is devoted to a home run, while a suicide bomber in Afghanistan killing two Marines gets a paragraph.  Charlie Sheen’s Truth Tour gets more exposure than a top general in Iraq discussing rebuilding efforts.  The sad thing is we don’t realize that this is happening to us.  And if we do, we don’t seem to care as long as the circus continues and we are “pacified” with cheap trinkets from China or entertainment in the form of Snooki.  Never mind that Snooki got more money for giving a talk at Rutgers University than Nobel-Fucking-Prize-Winning-and-I-Got-A-Damned-Pulitzer-Too Toni Morrison!  How the hell did that happen?

Richard Hofstadter wrote a book entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life back in 1963.  If you haven’t read this book, I highly suggest you pick it up at your local public library.  That’s if you still have a public library!  In his book, Hofstadter laments the poor state of the American intellectual, and how he must contend with a rising tide of stupidity coming from his fellow countrymen.  That’s a paraphrase of course, and a pretty dumbed down version of things, but hopefully it’s easy enough for people to understand.

Anyhow, I’m off to plan my vacation trip to the Creation Museum, and maybe I’ll swing by Dollywood as well.

Candlelight Vigils

You know what I fucking hate?  Candlelight vigils.  Not only is a gathering of people with candles a fire hazard, but they just don’t work.  I am particularly perplexed by people holding candlelight vigils for missing people.  I just read today that another young, attractive white woman went missing, and people have already scheduled a candlelight vigil for her.   People, instead of holding a fucking vigil, how about you form a search party instead or drive around the fucking neighborhood looking for her, seriously?  For Pete’s sake even putting up missing person posters on a lamp post is doing something!  Standing around with a damned candle is pointless.

I will admit that I can sort of understand a candlelight vigil for memorial purposes.  Say Princess Diana died and some idiot wants to stand outside and get hypothermia, that’s okay.  Nothing says I remember you like almost dying yourself.  I’m not going to do it, but to each their own.

Now if I ever go missing, I want all of you to be out there looking for me, and for the love of God, don’t stand around with fucking candles, okay?

The Questia Online Library

I’m a bibliophile.  I don’t read books, I devour them.  Though there’s nothing like holding a real book in your hands, there are times when an online book has its advantages.  First of all, you can read books that are rare or are no longer in print.  Secondly, it’s convenient to have instant access to books; you don’t have to get out in the rain and you don’t have to worry about the opening and closing times of the library or bookstore.  Michael Pastore elaborates more on this concept with 30 Benefits of Ebooks.

Since my passion involves reading lots of non-fiction, research papers, newspapers, magazines, etc. and very little fiction and novels, I’m always on the lookout for a good  source of Ebooks.  My dream would be to sit and read all day in a university research library, but since I can’t do that with 3 young children, I have to settle for Questia.  Questia is a full-text online library with access to over 77,000 books, 4 million articles, and 250 respectable publishers such as John Wiley & Sons and Oxford University Press.

Of course access to such a source is not free, in fact you have to pay a subscription, but that is perfectly fine with me.  I don’t mind paying for things that work.  Questia works.  For around $99 dollars a year you get access to all the sauce I mentioned above.  Not bad considering that for about $8 to $9 dollars a month you get complete access to books and journals that are of research caliber.  Well worth the cost in my opinion.

Money, Power, and Women

I’ve read several articles on the phenomenon that power or money, or both, usually attracts beautiful women.  Very rarely do you see a successful man being surrounded by a troll for a wife.  Now I can’t speak for whether or not a powerful homosexual male would be surrounded by an attractive male, because I’ve never really thought about it.  Perhaps my friend Paulo can elaborate if this phenomenon correlates to the gay community as well.

Anyhow, some social scientists say it is evolutionary that women are attracted to males that have power, which usually means that they have money as well, because it demonstrates that they can afford resources to provide for the woman and her offspring.  That is a very animal way of looking at things, but in a way I can understand that.  If a woman desires to have children, she wants them to have the best access to resources available, and a strong, powerful and successful male will be able to give her that.

If you look at some powerful politicians, how many sex scandals are they not involved in, usually involving beautiful young women?  Look at the Prime Minister of Italy, or Eliot Spitzer, et cetera.  I think power can also make you attractive.  If you take Prince William and Prince Harry, honestly, and just take away the fact that they are royalty, and just have them be regular Joes, they are really not that attractive.  At least in my opinion, but what do I know?  But add the royalty, the money, the fame, and they could probably have any women in the world that they so desired.  Of course I’m being simplistic in my reasoning, but you get the gist of what I’m saying.

For added emphasis, take a look at the First Ladies of Spain and France, aren’t they lovely?