The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

So Long, Steve Jobs

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October 5, 2011: Apple Computer has announced that Steve Jobs died today.

That sucks, and I’m saddened.

I remember an evening, many years ago, I think a Tuesday, at the regular monthly meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club, which was held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator building.

I’d ride my (somewhat small) 360 Yamaha motorcycle down Interstate 280 from San Francisco, and my tushie was frazzled by the time I arrived. But it was worth it. Those were exciting times, with new announcements about CP/M and new peripherals for the Altair. Some of the people attending have now become household words, and I met the infamous Captain Crunch there, who was imprisoned for hacking long distance calls with a whistle that came in Captain Crunch cereal boxes.

And on that particular night, there were two scuzzy guys in the foyer. They weren’t on the regular program, so they’d set up just inside the door but before you went into the auditorium where the “real” program was going on.

They were demonstrating a board they’d just developed that displayed … (gasp!) … colors. (At the time, displays were black and white.)

These two guys reminded me of my hippie days. Steve and Steve, their names were. Wozniak and Jobs.

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In the wake of his departure, here’s one of my favorite quotations, and maybe it has even more meaning today …

“Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs

 

Missing those Telemarketers

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Weed, California, September 2011: I was just sitting here thinking that I really miss those days, a few years back, when live telemarketers used to call me all the time.

Because I used to have a lot of fun with them. Perhaps it is evil of me, but my theory is that if they wish to call me up with their agenda, then it should be OK for me to answer the call with *my* agenda.

Their agenda was to sell me something. And almost 100% of the time it wasn’t something I needed.

My agenda was to take a break and have some fun. Here’s what I learned …

How to Create Telemarketer Hell

Here’s what you do: [Read more…]

How to Easily Make Decisions

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Weed, California, July 1, 2011: When I was quite young I had great difficulty making decisions. I was impulsive, and it largely stemmed from being extremely fearful and accepting my worries as if they were external objects. (That is, I had no insight that they were my creations, and I had no clue how to actually operate my mind and it’s automatic creations.)

So I was wishy-washy, I flip-flopped, I made great long lists and then still flip-flopped because the basis of all my decisions was the emotional content most pressing at the moment. But then …

[Read more…]

The Return of the CopyDragon …

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June 1976, San Francisco: As I mentioned, the Network Answering Service was created in my studio apartment at 495 Third Avenue, north of Golden Gate Park, and according to the employee manual, the primary purpose of the answering service was to feed Rosie the Cat.

Of course, we had a more noble mission, and-  But that’s neither here nor there, because this is about the CopyDragon, copywriter extraordinaire, raconteur, and gentleman at arms. That is, ahem, myself with my writing-copy hat on.

As best I know the first copy written was some advertising for Simple Simon bookkeeping (myself), and then there was a brief audiotext positioning message for my high-tech and newfangled answering machine, but this summer as I prepared to launch the answering service, I began writing a lot of what’s called “commercial writing,” which simply means writing for business purposes.

It includes:
[Read more…]

Writer’s Block – It’s an Illusion

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[reprinted with permission from CopyDragon.com webwriters]

Some people think they have nothing to say. Some people believe they cannot express themselves.

These are illusions.

Your “Helpful” Friend, the Unconscious Mind

These illusions, these thoughts, are caused by the unconscious mind’s automatic learning. It learns something, usually in childhood, and quite often these “solutions” are brilliant, given the resources you have at the time. Unfortunately, like how to tie your shoes, these solutions are re-generated automatically below consciousness ever after, and sometimes they fit, but oft-times these solutions suck!

These beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and automatic reactions are a part of you, operating below consciousness, but they are illusions. (In which we are sometimes as trapped, and blind, as fish are to the water.)

(If you want to learn more about how the unconscious mind both helps and sometimes harms you, in its effort to promote your survival, pick up my free book at http://beinghappytoday.com. You can one-click unsub the newsletter if you wish.)

How to Make Writing Flow Easily

Let’s talk about how to make writing, and self-expression … easy.

[Read more…]

Twenty Second Tune-Up Makes You Feel Good

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Weed, California, Easter Sunday 2009: Here is an Easter gift for you … a super-quick little thing you can do in about twenty seconds, and it makes you feel really good. Most likely this is very good for your body and mind as well, though I can’t prove it!

I call it ‘Arthur’s Twenty Second Tune-Up,’ and it’s both startlingly effective and super-easy.

How to Feel Good in 20 Seconds

First, get an index card, or something similar, about 3″ x 5″. And then … [Read more…]

A White Sport Coat, and Rocket Fuel

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Henrietta, Texas, Easter Sunday, 1958: I have Easter finery, and it is a white sport coat. At age twelve, this seems especially neato to me, because that Marty Robbins song about the White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation is still playing on the radio.

Usually, on school days, like my friends, I wear Levis or Lee Riders with a sport shirt. Because it is so cool to do so, I wear black loafers with white socks. Bobby Mitchell. has explained this to me, and he is a great fashion plate.

Bobby, Eddy Frank, Billy Ray, and several others are studying rocketry, and building rockets from aluminum tubes, hacksaws, wood, and gunpowder. Most of these rockets do not work, but we’re not giving up!

Today, however, I’m wearing Easter finery and sitting in my room, bored, because I’m dressed and ready for church, and the rest of my family is still getting dressed.

So that’s why I was fiddling with the rocket fuel.

[Read more…]

Insult to Injury in the Drum Section

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The band room of Henrietta High School, Henrietta, Texas, 1960: I was a hot-shot rudimental drummer, the head of the drum section. My associates were Noah on the bass drum, and … Linda on cymbols.

Noah had it easy. Just hit the bass drum on every beat.

Cymbols are more difficult, because you must stand, counting measure after measure, and sooner or later you get the the one place where you clash the cymbols together with a great flourish.

Linda had a bad habit of counting wrong. Sometimes we had cymbol clashes in the middle of soft passages. Often we passed the correct spot, and when Mr. Raeke glared, we got a kind of belated cymbol crash.

All this reflected upon me, the head of the drum section, so I tried to keep an eye on Linda, and helped her count the measures, whilst playing the rudimental snare part.

Although not particularly good at counting measures, she’d grown even more breathtaking from the first time I’d ever seen her walking down the street, and on this particular day she wore a snug black medium-weight turtleneck sweater which showed off her lovely figure to perfection, each perfect breast the stuff of dreams.

Today she was counting very seriously, and we were drawing near the correct place.

As the band headed into the last two measures, Linda raised the left cymbol high, and lowered the right cymbol low. Standing upright, her head and shoulders nodding in time, she counted down the last four beats.

Up came the measure, and the cymbols swung!

“Thunk.”

No stunning crash. Just a muffled sound. I looked at Linda’s face, but her eyes were blank, staring into space far beyond the ceiling of the room. It was pain. Wordless. Pain beyond speech.

She had caught her left breast between the cymbols.

 
 

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