Dear God, Make it Stop
On Monday I spent two hours at my local Target trying to find a birthday card for my father. TWO. HOURS. The experience left me with two conclusions:
Conclusion #1: There is a huge card market out there for families of divorce
I don’t know why no-one’s gotten on this. Create a line of cards that acknowledge events without conveying false sentiments of brimming love or wishes for success and a company could make a KILLING.
I just couldn’t find a card that says, “Happy Birthday. Thanks for being a good dad when I was growing up, but I have no idea who the hell you are now.” Or, “On your birthday, may all your wishes come true. Except for your lawsuit against Mom.”
The simplest one I found displayed a 3-D paper cake and read, “Your cake.” on the front. Inside it continued, “Have it. Eat it. Enjoy it. Happy Birthday.” It was very pretty and I liked it, except every time I read it in my mind it went like this, “Your cake. Have it. Eat it. Choke on it. Happy Birthday.”
In the end I went for a splashy-colored card that showed a beer mug with candles coming out the top, and read “Think outside the cake”.
Conclusion #2 Never go shopping without my Sharper Image sound soother
I love this thing beyond all other possessions because when I was working, I could click on the beautiful white noise of the ocean, the waterfalls, the rainforest or ten other variations in order drown out the endless yammering of my coworkers talking about their dogs, their dogs’ birthday parties, their dogs’ psycho-traumas, their dogs Days of Our Lives all. day. long.
Standing in Target or any public place in Utah, one is literally surrounded by hordes of children at all times. Screaming children. Crying children. OBNOXIOUS children. And no matter where you go, you can’t get away. Leave one kid freaking out in the shoe section and run into another just five feet away. Flee to the book nook and find four new mothers leading a newborn wailing troupe.
They howl and whine and carry on for god knows how long because they’re at it when they come into hearing range and still at it when they’re wheeled out. Mommy saying all the while, “Now, Timmy, it isn’t nice to yell.”
30 minutes of this and I’m dying to smack the first person within reach.
-
Maximum-Strength Tylenol: $5.50
-
Non-committal birthday card: $3.75
-
Not having to take the “my children hate me” guilt-trip: priceless
Thunk…thunk…Is this thing on?
Since I added the updates feature a few weeks ago, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on it so I don’t forget to email folks when I post new blogs. Granted, there haven’t been a whole lot of new posts, but I wouldn’t want to forget about anyone who actually signed up. Plus I think Notify List is a pretty cool tool that removes the need for me to spam my family.
However, looking at the members of my Notify List today, I see that there are only two. Myself, and…myself. Using a backup email address, I had signed up a few days ago to test the tool and find out whether I royally messed up the HTML.
It appears the HTML works just fine. But I’m also sure that the few people who’ve told me they read this blog and signed up for updates are not lying to me. So I get the feeling something wonky is going on here.
If anyone has tried to join my Notify List but hasn’t ever received an update, please leave a comment. Take a sec to read through the pointers below and let me know whether you did or did NOT get a confirmation email from Notify List, or if you had any other problems trying to sign up.
To Sign Up For Updates:
1. Go to the left hand column
2. Under “UPDATES”, click the “join” button. (Enter your email address too and save a step)
3. This will take you to the Notify List for sileah-mpublication
4. Read & follow registration details on this screen
5. A confirmation email should be sent to the email address you provided
6. Go to your email address and open the confirmation email
7. Click the link to finish your registration
Thanks for signing up! I’d LOVE to have more of y’all, so I promise to sort this out shortly!
Video: Yellowstone 2005
OK, since embedding footage from our recent trip to Yellowstone into the browser itself did not prove too successful, I am simply posting a link to the source file here:
Yellowstone 2005 from Jules Maas on Vimeo.
If you click the play button, the video should launch.
You can get free downloads of these most current media players here:
Windows Media Player 10
RealPlayer
This is a BIG file. If you would prefer to download it for later viewing, simply place your cursor over the link and right click. Select “Save Target As” from the pop-up menu & save it directly to your computer.
Please god, let it work. But if it doesn’t LET ME KNOW! This has become a project of principle – I just want to make the damn thing work.
Fly, Evil Monkeys, Fly
 click to see our yellowbrick road
|
Maybe it’s just me, but trying to find one perfect house in the Emerald City recently seemed a LOT like life in a fairytale. This one’s too old, that one’s too small. This one’s too musty, that one’s WAY too expensive. |
|
That one’s built in 1962, and this one has a neighborhood I’m SURE I saw on COPS last week. This one has a hot tub the exact same color as the orange shag carpet, and that one has a biohazard sticker ON THE BASEMENT DOOR. Dorothy journeyed the entire length of the Land of OZ and killed a witch to find her way home, finding in the end that all she really needed to do was give the idiot behind the curtain a kick in the butt and tell him to GET ON IT. Over the course of seven progressively worse days, we saw every craptastic, overpriced house between Monroe and Renton and watched as the only one we could even consider was sold to someone else within 12 hours. Needless to say, we were more than a little hacked with our ‘great OZ’. Taking care to be as clear as possible, my husband made sure OZ understood we wouldn’t hesitate to drop a house on HIM if the results didn’t improve, pronto. Within three clicks of our heels, we found ourselves in charming little Maple Valley. And amazingly enough, we found a brand new house, just days from completion and with a price we wouldn’t need a second mortgage for. Highway 18 shoots my husband straight into work and on the off hours, Bellevue is just 30 minutes away for me. Hey ho, the witch is dead, baby. There’s no place like home. |
|
Because I Said So
Life online was pretty interesting for me last week. On the high note, Maas Publications received it’s first trackback EVER and I posted a comment to my favorite website that the author not only LIKED, but emailed me personally to say how much she appreciated my thoughts.
On the low note, I officially ‘launched’ Maas Publications by spamming family, friends, coworkers and just about anybody I had an address for. I spent days adding content, testing video, setting up notification features and creating early merchandise ideas.
Mostly, the whole thing was an exercise, a test to see what got a response, and to share a video I made of our Yellowstone trip that folks were asking to see. Perhaps I was a little too proud of the whole thing, maybe a bit too entertained by the web ‘toys’ I’d learned to create. And I was excited to be writing more often, to be employing new style ideas and finding my ‘voice’ again.
I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it, and I’m happy with what I’ve done so far. It’s a start. But I was also living in a state of “Isn’t this so FREAKING COOL?”, imagining that by inviting people I knew to ‘stop in’, I’d get emails upon emails of questions, comments or problems. Maybe even a few, “Wow’s”
Why did I think this? Simply because I put it up and thought it was awesome. Which really just equates to trying to slap something up on a wall and telling people they’ll like it “Because I said so”.
A tactic that never, ever works. So here are a few object lessons in marketing/communications/web design that I’ve learned as a result:
- Don’t mention pictures if all you’re posting is VIDEO. Especially when many of the folks you’re emailing happen to be rabid scrapbookers. They’ll spend five hours scouring your site and leave phone messages asking, “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR DAMN PICTURES?”
- Not everyone has the same media player or browser. Or even HAVE a media player. In fact, some people might actually own…a MAC. Embedding video directly into the browser does NOT solve problems caused by player versions, computer memory or god forbid, slower connection speeds.
- If your writing voice is totally different than your speaking voice, don’t be surprised to hear that your site seems “over the top”; My written persona, much like my eBay persona, is completely different than my family persona. I like the former much more than the latter. But she’s blunter and weirder and louder, so it’s asking lot to expect those who know the meeker me to jump on the bandwagon.
- Never spam your family, friends and anyone else you have an email address for in the hope of creating a reader base. Not only will you alienate all of these people, most of them are very nice people who would rather break their fingers than send you a single word of honest, negative feedback.
So I’m off to figure out a better way to post video, read that new book on copywriting fundamentals and dreaming up more effective ways to build my site. But I think the most helpful thing to keep in mind, is to write for myself. If I stay true to my ‘voice’ and the story, I’ll know when it’s working and when it’s not – when the readers start coming on their own.
