Bad Ideas
Want a quick route to inspiration and creativity? There probably isn't one, but one of the first steps is to swallow your pride. While brainstorming about ideas my girlfriend could use to create a new and eye-catching work of art, I suggested that we take the idea of Hieronymus Bosch's famous work "Garden of Earthly Delights" and implement the idea with a twist: use stuffed animals. Pose dozens and dozens of stuffed animals with one...
"Naked Dude"
I maintained a blog for a very short period of time during college. (It was read by maybe one other person.) Among the things I posted on it was a web comic that I called "Naked Dude".
I don't remember what possessed me to write this (probably some terrible brand of lecture hall-tedium), but here are all of the three strips of "Naked Dude":
What Would Jesus Tweet?
Perhaps the best question to ask first and foremost is whether or not, if Jesus were around in this day and age, with access to our technology, would he use it? I don't think it's a sacrilegious question to pose. (Although, if anyone thinks it is, I apologize for that). In his day, Jesus had twelve disciples that followed him around. He traveled around spreading his own message of hope, and the speed at which...
Facebook Opt Out
The smarter marketers like Seth Godin go against conventional wisdom, and practice their craft in accordance with the following fact: Opt Out = Spam If you automatically start sending people alerts and emails when they come to your site, with a small message at the bottom of each saying "You're getting these emails because you registered on our site. Feel free to go to your 'Settings' page to turn them off." You know what this...
If I Had a Hammer
There's an old expression about how if someone gives you a hammer, suddenly, everything in the world starts to look like a nail. I think it's important that you figure out what kind of hammer you have, and that at any given time, you have something in front of you that needs pounding.
And then, keep on pounding till it's finished. Repeat as necessary.
Seeking the Random
Wherever you're reading this, scroll to the top of this page you're on and have a look at the links. Next to the search box and the "Report Abuse" link, there's a link with the text "Next Blog >>>". Go ahead, have a look...I'll wait here until you get back. See it? If you click it, it will propel you away from my blog and into another random person's. Some days, when I get bored,...
Are You Reading This?
If you are, I can guess why: it's either because you know me personally and are friends with me on Facebook, or it's because you've stumbled across this blog from a search engine somehow. If it's the latter, my guess is that you're not going to read all the way till the end of this sentence. There are lots of writers on the Internet. A lot of them have really great ideas and seem like...
Want Me To Follow You?
There's a guy following me on Google Buzz. I don't know him personally, so he's one of those random strangers I connected with after Buzz opened the floodgates. His name is Jay T. Deragon, and he's one of the authors of this book. Like me, he has a blog about marketing that he updates pretty frequently, and I find his posts very interesting. But I'm not following him back. The reason is because every day,...
Why Write a Book?
In an era when you can share your ideas online, using a blog, for free, why would anyone take the trouble to write a book? As a writer offering your ideas, the last thing you should be trying to do is making money selling books. Sure, a select few authors hit a home run and manage to pull down some decent residual income from royalties, but if that's what you set out to do, you're...
Quantify This
When you think about it, Miles Per Gallon is really only a useful metric if you consider it in relative terms. You know that a car getting 35 MPG is generally accepted as being more environmentally-friendly than a cart that's getting, say, 17 MPG. Honda Civics tend to consume less gasoline per mile traveled than Hummers do, and since Civics conserve gasoline relative to Hummers, we look at them favorably. By if you're driving in...