The Adventures of Bloggard

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

Paul Harvey … Good Day.

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Henrietta, Texas, 1960: When I was a senior in high school, at lunch I’d run to my car and drive quickly down to the Lo’ Boy drive in, to order a BLT sandwich and coke, and then … on with the radio.

Paul Harvey. One day he said, “Sniffing glue. All the kids in Texas are doing it.”

Because my high school, and the Lo’ Boy, were located in Texas, I was dubious about that particular story. I knew he was full of beans.

But most of the time, he was so on. And then one day he said he’d be speaking at the VFW hall in Vernon, which was less than an hours drive. I vowed to go.

In chemistry class, I mentioned my trip to Vernon to the Chemistry teacher, Mr. Blassingame.

“Can I go with you?” he said.

Well, heck yeah. So me and the chemistry teacher went and heard Paul Harvey speak live. It was a magical event, it-

Actually I do not remember anything at all about it. I have a vague picture in my mind of the building, but I couldn’t pick Paul Harvey out of a line-up, and have no clue what he said.

Yesterday (2/28/09), I learned that Paul Harvey is no longer on this planet. He has moved on. I’ll miss him, and I bet lots of people will miss his unique delivery, his voice, his quick turn of events, and really-cool unknown stories about famous people in history.

Of course, back then, in high school, the voices on the radio, like the voices of my schoolmates, were eternal, as were our dreams, and life itself.

After my big trip to Vernon, for the rest of my senior year, I had an investment in Paul Harvey, and the BLT sandwich, the coca-cola, and Paul Harvey kept me company every lunchtime at the Lo’Boy. And what he’d say at the end of every program was …

… Good Day. …

The Golden Words, Opium, and my dog Charlie

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The big vacant lot, Weed, California, July 4, 2008: I was walking with my dogs, and I got to talking to my dog Charlie, who is young and impulsive. He’s a great listener. I can say any kind of nonsense and he’s still interested.

But I was talking to Charlie and I asked him if he liked poetry. He didn’t answer, being a dog, and I asked him if he like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He didn’t answer that either.

But it got me to musing about that story. Do you remember how Coleridge was an opium smoker?

Well, he was.

And there he was, high as a kite, and in his mind’s eye he saw this really swell poem, and he went to write it down. It’s really quite wonderful. Has several paragraphs, and the first one goes like this …

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”

But at that moment, a guy to whom Coleridge owed money came banging on the door! Interrupted our Samuel, and that was the end of the swell poem.

Bummer.

And while I was walking along with Charlie, who ran to chase some birds, I was thinking how we’re all searching for the … Golden Words.

The Golden Words that will bring us the love of our life. The Golden Words that will banish all our fears forever. The Golden Words that will magically unlock the riches of the internet.

Kind of like ‘Open, Sesame,’ for Ali Baba.

But when the currents of life toss you about, you know how often the quest for these Golden Words can toss us right in among the Forty Theives!

Oh, gosh, it can be confusing.

I’ve felt completely flabbergasted sometimes. Not because there’s any shortage of information. In fact, there’s too much!

There’s gems and glimmering gold all around us, as we go through life, but it’s like glimpsing a treasure while everyone around you is yelling.

Don’t you sometimes wish for something just simple and clear?

Something just simple?

Something clear?

Unlike Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, seems like it’s just swell to be clear-headed, and sometimes I think that maintaining a good sense of balance, a feeling of calm, and a clear vision may be the entire trick to living a wonderful life.

And if, sometimes, we’re all searching for the Golden Words … well, there’s a little artist in all of us.

Adrienne Searches on Google

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Weed, California, Spring 2009: Adrienne is still somewhat new to computers, and she comes up with things that often elude me.

(Even around the house; she fixed the ‘broken’ garbage disposal; I’d never have thought to use the plumber’s friend plunger!)

She has good results with the search engine, and uses it all the time.

One day I watched, and she types in entire sentences, like “Where can I find a list of all the major dog sanctuaries in the United States?”

I asked her why she didn’t just enter “dog sanctuaries”. [Read more…]

How to Write a Sales Script

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San Francisco, Many Years Ago: Back in those days, I ran an answering service and later a voicemail company from an office on beautiful, scenic Geary Boulevard.

Fueled by a talk I heard at a trade convention, I began to experiment with ‘scripted’ sales presentations on the telephone. The lady giving the talk had claimed that a scripted sales presentation got more sales than just ‘winging’ it.

But first you got to write down the script!

How to do that?

Well …

In doing my experiments, I found a wonderful way to work out the scripts, to come up with stuff that was powerful. If you just try writing it down, it tends to wander all over the place like a lost dog sniffing after olfactory wonders in the woodland.

Plus, plenty of things that theoretically ought to work … don’t. But my organized method works wonders.

Later, I discovered I could simply sell the voicemail by leading the buyer into listening to my (recorded) presentation on the voicemail itself. These days a lot of selling is done on the internet, and still on the telephone. And there’s a mighty parallel between my older processes and the way things are sold today, on the phone and online.

Here is the method that worked again and again …

(Oh the sheer suspense!)

OK. Enough stalling. Here’s the plan …

(1) At first, if you can, arrange to take calls whenever possible, even if it’s a cheapo product.

(2) Improvise and explain your product as best you can. Answer their questions as best you can.

(3) After just a little time, you will notice that you are saying the same words to every caller, and you will notice that the callers are asking the same questions.

(4) Now write down (or record) those words that you are saying. Make a list of the questions that they most frequently ask, and weave the answers into your presentation.

(5) Now you have a tested and working presentation.

The human is always efficient. We learn not to waste time or energy automatically. Even without much thinking about it, you will notice maybe subconsciously, what ‘worked’ and you’ll repeat that behavior on your next phone call. You’re a human. That’s how a human naturally operates.

Try it. You’ll like it.

Peeping and Hiding

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Wichita Falls, Texas, 1971: In my apartment I played my stratocaster. I was thin and trim in those days, and I’d picked up a girlfriend for a week or two, by the name of Mary.

I don’t recall how I met her, but she had a teeny-tiny little apartment some dozen blocks away from where I lived, and so who knows? Maybe I met her on the street. But I’d met her somewhere, and always an eager experimenter at that time, I’d fetched her to my place for a while.

I didn’t think she was a truly pretty girl, but she was eager and earnest, and … well … those are good qualities, with the right timing.

And Mary was a devotee of something called Sloe Gin. It’s a weird kind of sweetish alcohol beverage, and she’d been drinking quite a bit of it that day there in my apartment, and she came to sit on the carpet about a foot away from where I stood, playing my statocaster.

I was rocking out. I must have thought I was pretty cool, and I was having a good time.

And ignoring Mary, for she commenced to writhe around my legs.

For just a minute there I thought I was probably Keith Richards.

But then other thoughts intruded, and we shall now pass over later events of the day. In silence.

Now, as it happened, I only kept company with Mary for a little while.

Maybe I got a better offer. Maybe I became bored with her. I no longer remember. But callous youth, I moved on, and forgot about her.

About a year later, I was walking up my street. It was a grey and overcast day, of a neutral temperature. I don’t know what I was doing, probably just taking a walk to stretch my legs. Somehow the walk got longer and longer, and when I was on the block that was near Mary’s old apartment, I was crossing the street, and about a block away, I saw Mary.

She was pushing a baby cart.

I ducked.

I jumped behind a car, and peeked out cautiously. Yup. Mary.

Yup. Baby cart.

Skulking out of sight, I went round the block in the other direction. She never saw me. With an interesting mix of thoughts and emotions flooding through my mind, I crept back to my apartment.

And that’s the end of the story.

Captured by the Black Bart Gang

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Henrietta, Texas, 1956 or 1957: I’m not sure of the date. In the terror of the memory, some parts are vague, unreal. It was when I attended Junior High, which at that time was in the old, two-story brick high school building near the center of town.

Life was exciting and new. My friends and I were in the big school, with the big, grown-up kids in high school, and some of them had cars. My home life was shaken up, for my mother had married Dr. Strickland, and we’d gone to live in the flat of rooms above his office. This was on the other side of downtown, across from the hospital, and right on the main road, Highway 287, which ran through the center of town.

I had a friend named Bobby Mitchell, I had been to their house, and so I knew his older brother, Mike Mitchell.

Mike generally ignored me, or treated me with disdain. He was at that age when teen boys begin to think themselves wild and dangerous, and that’s what started the trouble.

What happened was, one of Mike’s pals, I think it was Larry Holman, had a car. It was an old, rounded Ford or a Mercury, I didn’t know cars so I’m not sure, but he drove it to High School, and several of Mike’s friends and Larry Holman began hanging around together, and usually departing school in this car.

Mike had dark hair and flashing eyes, and had grown tall and rangy, and I guess his buddies started calling him ‘Black Bart.’ His name was not Bartholomew, but I suppose that ‘Black Bart’ sounded more sinister than ‘Black Mike.’

And what with one thing and another, the next thing I know, I began hearing references to … Black Bart’s gang.

Sounded scary.

That day the bunch of them were lounging against the car in the shade of the elms outside the school, as I left the doors and the safety of the high school building. Perhaps they picked up on my fear, because Mike called out, “Dickie!” (That was my name.) I blinked.

“Huh?”

“Come here!” he ordered.

Reluctantly, I walked up to the car where they stood, scowling. They were so big. I said nothing.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Uh, home,” I said.

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Get in the car.”

Perhaps there were looks back and forth between the four of them, but I didn’t see. I was terrified, and I got in the car, into the back seat as he held the door open.

They all piled in. Larry Holman drove, with Mike riding shotgun. I was squished between the other two in the back seat. Mike smiled over the seat at me, an evil smile.

“We’re going to take you for a little ride,” he said.

“Uh ….” I said.

“Shut up!”

Larry Holman backed up and pulled out, tires squealing. He glanced at Mike. Mike gestured ahead.

“Let’s take him out to the country,” he said.

“Uh ….” I said.

“Shut up!”

I shut up.

Larry Holman turned onto the highway.

Mike ordered me to get down on the floorboards in the back. One of the others put his foot on my back.

I could see nothing but the ratty carpet in front of my face. It smelt of damp leaves. It wasn’t very comfortable, because of the hump in the floor, which was where the driveshaft went to the back wheels. I began thinking about everything I knew about cars, trying to calm my racing mind, as I felt the car speeding and slowing, rocking this way and that, turning corners.

The members of the gang talked among themselves. One asked if they should really leave me way out here. The others said sure, that I could walk home in a few hours. So I knew they probably weren’t planning to kill me. Then they began talking about the wild dogs.

This went on for some time. They grew quiet, occasionally saying something like, “That’s old man Johnson’s place. Remember when he shot that guy with the shotgun?”

After what seemed an eternity, the car drew up to a stop.

“Get out,” said Mike, that is, Black Bart.

“Come on!” I cried out.

“Shut up! Get out!”

The door opened. I was hefted and shoved out the door.

Terrified, stumbling, I regained my feet, as the car squealed away behind me.

I was standing in front of my house.

How to Write

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Weed, California, October 2008: Outside, it’s Autumn for sure. The air is crisp and chill, and I feel grateful to be in my room, where the morning sunlight falls in stripes through the venetian blinds upon the white-painted wall, and my desk lamp is a warm color here where I work.

I just entered a contest online with a copywriting guru, with a question about writing, and I jotted down for him what I know, and then asked the biggest question that I know.

So I thought: Lots of people don’t write, but it’s easy and fun. Maybe not everybody knows how. And actually, writing information or a story (or anything) is not actually that difficult, though many people think so.

So here, plain and simple, is how to write.

THE BASIC PROCESS OF WRITING

The whole trick, in my experience, is to have (a) some notes and rumination time, during which the subconscious will actually begin structuring useful stuff behind the scenes; (b) an outline can be helpful (mainly because it starts you working with the material); and (c) to sit down and start writing.

THE REPUTED “WRITER’S BLOCK” IS AN ILLUSION

If you discover yourself staring at a blank sheet of paper, and not writing, then either you may not have done your notes and rumination; or you must may be feeling a ‘block’ which is actually just a kind of perfectionist interference from your own mind where you’re actually thinking of things to say and rejecting every one as it comes.

The cure to getting past ‘blank sheet of paper’ is to get out of bed and before anything — no brushing teeth, no coffee — start writing any junk that comes into your head, related or not related, your dreams, your opinions, wild thoughts, any and every thought that comes to your head. After practicing writing stuff on paper, the block will vanish. This is a reliable cure. It’s the darndest thing.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR WRITING “GOOD”

When you sit down to write your main project, if you can’t write *good* stuff (in your opinion), then *blather* on paper. You can always (1) write any kind of garbage (in your opinion), and then simply (2) later take out all the crappy parts.

Once you have a mass of material, then simply the willingness to rewrite will reshape it into good stuff.

HOW TO KNOW WHAT’S “GOOD”

And although it’s not always possible to say what’s the *best* presentation, pretty much anyone can use the A-B method to ask themself, “Which is better? A? or B?” And you always get an answer to this kind of question (from the subconscious). You’ll also discover that the answer is reliable.

THERE IS NO BARRIER TO WRITING

Looked at this way, writing may take time, but there is no barrier. You will write stuff, and you will rewrite good stuff. It’s just that simple.

THE ONLY QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED

“What is the best way, or just a workable and reliable way, to choose exactly what to write?”

A simple question.

The Target for the Question: The piece of writing selected should (by definition in our situation) attain the goal that you have for writing anything in the first place. That is, what to write is a derivative of what is your goal in life, what is your goal in this situation.

Sometimes the answer to this question will be simple and clear and obvious.

Other times, perhaps not so.

But in that case, you can simply write about the question. Use the technique above.

Clarity will emerge.

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

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Ginette Degner’s blog, November 2008: The Bloggard has completely stolen this list from Search Engine Diva, even the title, because it made me fall about. Maybe you’d like it, too.

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Dont Disguise Your Voice!

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. At the Office, put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks . Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

5. In the Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write For Marijuana.

6. Skip down the hall Rather Than Walk and see how many looks you get.

7. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

8. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is To Go.

9. Sing Along At The Opera.

10. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Cant Attend Their Party Because You have a headache.

11. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream I Won! I Won!

12. When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling Run For Your Lives! Theyre Loose!

13. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.

14. Pick up a Box of Condoms at the Pharmacy, Go to the Counter, and Ask Where the Fitting Room is.

 
 

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