The Point of the Story

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Author: BJ (Page 30 of 35)

Touched By An Angel

16 February 2020 / / 0 Comments
7 Min Read

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

Joni mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” (1968)

In the year and a half that I took off between undergrad and grad school, I worked my first real job at a cellphone company. The great thing about a real job is that, if it is indeed a real job, you get health insurance.

About two months before I was set to head off to North Carolina to become a graduate student for the next 5-6 years of my life, it dawned on me that being a graduate student wasn’t going to be a “real job.” In other words, I was about to lose any semblance of meaningful health insurance.

Realizing what I was about to lose, I went off on a manic medical appointment making spree, tearing through my bucket list of check-ups and procedures that had been on my mind.

By some miracle I pulled off a trifecta, and after less than 15 minutes on the phone, I had somehow scheduled 3 doctor’s appointments for three consecutive days the following week. I was–and am still–way too proud of having achieved that feat in my lifetime.

Two of these were really run-of-the-mill: an eye check-up and a trip to the dentist’s office. The third one was a little more interesting: a consultation with an ENT (ear/nose/throat) specialist.

Well, it shouldn’t have been that interesting, and it didn’t really seem to be at the time. The pretense of the appointment was related to my lifelong bad habit of picking tonsil stones out of my tonsils in my spare [alone] time.

It wasn’t anything crazy like the tonsil stone videos you might find on YouTube–they were just little fellas. Quick tip, though: if you haven’t seen a video of someone harvesting1That can’t be the right term, yet somehow feels the most right… their tonsil stones…you might want to pass on that offer. It’s about as bad as the cockroach-nest-in-the-kid’s-ear videos…

Anyways, I decided to be proactive and seize the opportunity to do something about my tonsils while I had the coverage, so my trip to the ENT was to see if I could get a tonsillectomy scheduled before the end of the summer. While the doctor said my condition was only a low-grade infection that I had probably had for quite some time, he agreed that I could get them taken out if that’s what my heart so desired.

Fast-forward a few weeks to the night before my first-thing-in-the-morning surgery. I was trying to be a good patient, so I had dutifully followed the no-food-or-drink bit, and didn’t consume anything after 10 pm. Of course I didn’t want to get dehydrated between then and after my surgery, so, thinking ahead, I drank a bit more water than I normally would have otherwise.

My mom was the one that would be accompanying me to the surgery and taking me home afterwards, and right on schedule, she picked me up and whisked me off to my date with destiny.

The surgery itself was pretty much run-of-the-mill: they knocked my ass out, and when I came to, I was slightly less of a man than I used to be. I was little ticked to learn that they had immediately disposed of the trophies with the rest of the medical waste, as I was hoping to keep them (or at least see them) like I got to with my wisdom teeth.

After I came out of surgery, they let me have a quick bathroom break before wheeling me off to the recovery room for a planned hour or two of rest and recuperation.

Well, it was supposed to be a quick bathroom break. I ended up setting up camp for a good 10 minutes, as I was pretty sure I had to pee, but instead just sat there having not a single drop of luck.

I thought that was odd, especially since it occurred to me that while I had drank plenty of water the night before, I had forgotten to use the restroom before going into surgery. So surely it couldn’t be that I didn’t actually have to pee, could it?

I tried sitting in there as long as I could, but the orderly kept nagging me and said I had had more than enough time to do my business and that I needed to get to the recovery room. They basically had to drag me out of that bathroom. A boy knows when he hasn’t peed enough. I can’t explain how, he just knows.

After about 10 minutes in the recovery room, the need to pee hadn’t subsided at all, so I made them take me back to the bathroom. But, it was just pretty much déjà vu all over again, with the exact same script as before playing out.

They told me I just needed to chillax, and I tried to explain to them that it was kind of hard to do that when I seriously needed to take a leak.

But, again, I found myself trying to relax in the recovery room against my will. The doctor had ordered me to just lay there and try to maybe nap some, and then in 40 minutes I could try again–if I really thought I needed to do my biz and take a whiz, that is.

They kept telling me that it probably just felt like I needed to pee, so I should be able to safely ignore the urge. I thought, hey, what do I know? and tried to take them at their word.

So I just laid there in the dimly lit room, so ----- miserable, trying to convince myself that my body was lying to me and that I should just get a little shut eye. I had the mental fortitude–I could do this. Only 40 minutes until I had another shot at sweet relief, right?

After about 30 minutes had passed, I started to be confident I could make it the full 40. Of course I needed some objective verification of the situation:

Me: “Hey Mom, how long has it been?”

Mom: “Since when?”

Me: “Since, you know…”

Mom: “Since you last asked how long it had been?”

Me: “Yeah, I guess. I thought it was patently obvious what I was asking.”

Mom: “Oh, about 5 or 6 minutes.”

Me: …

Me: “Fuck this shit. Call the doctor in here NOW.“

It was at this point when I realized that I had entered into the bowels–no, bladder–of hell.

After much pleading with the doctor, he finally ordered an ultrasound for me. I gotta say, given that I was a virgin,2You expected this footnote to completely contradict that statement or have some Mormom-type qualifier saying that butt-sex is excluded, didn’t you? Well, guess what? It’s actually as true of a statement as it seems. I hadn’t even gotten to second base at this point in my life, save for one time in 5th grade that was completely by accident. I hadn’t envisioned myself getting an ultrasound any time soon.

Or ever. Because, you know…I’M A ----- DUDE.3Okay, so we know that I don’t mean this literally. I just established that this was one dude who actually had never ----- , so ” ----- ” in the usage as “one who ----- ” is not what is intended here. In case that wasn’t clear. Which it’s probably not, thanks to every other word getting censored.

Well, anyways, it took waaaaay too long (~20 minutes) for the ultrasound tech to show up. The tech did her thing, and, as she came to terms with what she was seeing, she actually let out a soft audible gasp . “Oh my” was all she said at first.

That is not the response you ever want to hear from a medical professional.

She went and grabbed the doctor and he came back to double check her calculations.

The doctor:4Not to be confused with my friend The Doctor… “So…I guess you were right when you said you needed to pee. According to the ultrasound, you have over a liter of liquid in your bladder. That’s well over the capacity of a normal human bladder.”

Me: “No shit, Sherlock–or should I say, ‘no piss, Paddington’?5I’m indulging here. I didn’t say either of those. Though it would have been completely appropriate in that moment. What’s our move here? I’m dying, Doc!”

Doctor: “Well…we’re going to need to insert a catheter up your urethra. Are you okay with–“

Me: “Yes, I know how caths work. Shut the ----- up and stick it in my ----- for God’s sake!”

Anyways, as you can imagine, it’s not within the doctor’s pay grade to be shoving catheters in every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along…or should I say…nevermind. You know where that joke was going. Implied humor should suffice here.

About 5 minutes later, a nurse walks in with the godsend/catheter in hand. A young nurse. About my age. And kinda cute.

Sooo…yeah, that was an awkward moment for me. About to get my tally-whacker touched for the first time by a comely lass, and I can’t think of a more romantic setting.

The truth is, though, I did not give a flying ----- in that moment. You know, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and all that. Not having an exploding bladder kind of trumps everything else except for breathing, I would argue.

She gracefully and deftly got the tube where it needed to go, and then…oh, the sweetest relief a man could ever taste in this lifetime.

I CANNOT overstate the flood of emotions–and urine–in that moment. On the surface, this all may sound trivial and laughable even, but I’m here to say that not being able to pee is an incredibly ----- up situation that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemas.6Yes, that’s a pun. Ha ha.

On top of everything else, the collection bag couldn’t handle all that I had to offer, and they had to pinch off the flow while they changed the bags out. I can’t be certain, but I want to say that the bags were 750 ml, and I filled up 500 ml of the second one, so about 1.2 liters in total (!!!).

About 20 seconds after the nurse completed her duties, I was struck by a sharp pang…of regret.

Throughout this, I was in something of a loopy state, a combination of exhaustion and coming down off the anesthesia. Add to that the weird high I was getting from the overwhelming relief the catheter offered, and my sense of humor was as mirthful as ever.

What I regretted was missing the opportunity for a couple of zingers I had come up with in the middle of the cathing process, but didn’t have the wherewithal or presence of mind to say aloud to the nurse.

I really, really wish I could go back in time and at least say to her “I could kiss you right now.” And the truth about that comment is that I could have. Not in a romantic or sexual way, mind you, but in the sense that you would want to kiss the angel who is delivering you from the pits of Hades.

But if I really had been with it, here’s how I should have answered the age-old question first posed by early-90s heartthrob Jamie Walters,7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Do_You_Talk_to_an_Angel “How Do You Talk To An Angel?”:

Geez…Let me at least buy you dinner first.

A young man being touched by an Angel for the very first time

To be continued…

Content created on: 27/28 January & 15 February 2020 (Monday/Tuesday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No Cookies for Kesha

13 February 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Ah, guilty pleasures. Everybody has them. Or at least should have them–it’s only healthy, ya know?

“But wait, what’s a guilty pleasure?” you (and the Elder both) ask.

Well, as I explained to my favorite first-grader last night:

You see, a guilty pleasure is something you really enjoy, but are too embarrassed to admit you enjoy it. For example, if I watched Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood on our local PBS station with you girls, then that’s cool. But if I secretly watched it by myself after you went to bed, well, I sure wouldn’t tell any of my friends I did that!

Grown-ass man who is merely making an analogy1Just kidding. I know that this is an example, or a hypothetical situation, but definitely not an anAlogy. and does not, in fact, watch daniel tiger’s neighborhood when he’s alone

And often times guilty pleasures come with a side serving of regret.

You see, back in the day after the Boss Lady and I were married, but before we had wee ones, a couple of her close friends decided that for there joint birthday celebration, they wanted a themed party.

The theme? You guessed it: guilty pleasures.

Around that time I had discovered that she would listen to owner-of-an-obnoxiously-sultry-voice and nationally syndicated radio D.J., Delilah. In turn, I did what any loving husband would do and teased her about it endlessly. So, it was a no-brainer who she would be going as:

Figure 1. Now taking your calls: them bangs.

For my part, my secret vice was also directly related to the public’s contemporaneous poor taste in music. Though I almost hated myself for it, any time I was alone in the car, I would rock out to party-girl and pop-rock sensation, Ke$ha:2Image source: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25297496

Yeah. Her. Known for such hits as “Tik Tok,” “Blah Blah Blah,” “Your Love Is My Drug,” and “Take It Off”3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_(Kesha_album)–most of which are not only party-centric, but controlled substance-themed as well. A rocking good time for the ears, to say the least.

So there. I admit that I loved her music. Ke$ha’s love was my drug and her music my guilty pleasure.

But I couldn’t go to this party dressed up as her music…no problem, though, because, apart from an arbitrary marking on our birth certificates, her and I were practically twins, dare I say…doppelgängers?

I’m pretty sure you could see where this was headed even before you started reading this. Yes, you are correct: you better believe that I’m not going to pass up a socially-sanctioned opportunity to cross-dress. For me, Halloween in January will beat out Christmas in July any day!

That evening as we were getting ready, the Boss Lady got me half prepared for my role before realizing that she needed to hop in the shower if we didn’t want to be too fashionably late. So there I was just chillin’, waiting for her in nothing but pantyhose, a balloon-filled bra, a sexy af mini-skirt, and most of my make-up. However, I still had yet to don a properly-torn top, boots, and the blonde wig.4Not that I needed the wig. I had plenty of luscious long blonde locks as it were.

…and that’s when the knock on the door came.

I peeped out the window and saw a young girl from our neighborhood, probably about 9 years old, patiently waiting outside our door. My mind frantically raced…should I pull Natosha out of the shower? Should I just answer the door?

As the tiny-fisted knocks reverberated through our door and throughout the house a second time, the situation became even more urgent, as I realized why she was calling upon us at such an hour.

She was slanging that mid-winter’s crack that every American knows and loves and is chemically dependent upon: Girl Scout cookies.

Me: “Babe, I know you’re in the shower, but what do I do? WHAT DO I DO?!?”

TBL: “Just answer the door! I don’t want to miss my main shot at a freezer loaded with Thin Mints!”5(TM)

“I know, I know! I desperately need my Peanut Butter Patties6ibid and Samoans,7Almost ibid… too, but I haven’t finished getting dressed–not that being fully-dressed would help the matter any.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, they’re cookies, not a South Pacific people group? Samoas, not Samoans! A didn’t marry no ----- cannibal!”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“And you don’t make me answer the door naked!”

“Too bad! There’s no way I’m answering it–it’s just too ----- risky!”

…and that brings me back to regret.

Regret can be combined with Girl Scout cookies in many different ways:

  • regret not ordering any
  • regret not ordering enough
  • regret eating the whole ----- box of Thin Mints8(TM) in one sitting
  • regret not holding up the cookie delivery truck and robbing them blind
  • etc. etc. etc

However, in this case I thought I would change it up and illustrate-by-counter-example.

You see, during my first year of grad school, I was the only one of my roommates home when the local Girl Scout9Technically, not the same one from earlier. came by in the middle of one cold-ass winter afternoon. Not thinking much about it, my Midwestern hospitality kicked in, and I instinctively invited her inside to get out of the cold while I fetched my checkbook.

When she automatically declined with all politeness, I had a brief moment of clarity, realizing that I probably seemed much more creepy than courteous No biggie, though.

Well, sure enough when she came around again the next year, there I was, home all alone with no one to answer the door. And once again, I realized too late that I was inviting her in…

The point of the story is, I strongly recommend not answering the door when a Girl Scout comes a-knocking and you’re halfway dressed in drag. I guarantee you will experience nothing but the opposite of regret. Especially when you’ve got two strikes against you and you’re on the verge of becoming a registered sex-offender–in the eyes of the local Girl Scouts, at least.

And we all know that there is no higher authority under the heavens than She Who Controls the Cocaine Cookies…

Figure 2. This girl’s ready to party.

Content created on: 12 February 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Breaking Ephen Like A Stephen

9 February 2020 / / 0 Comments
7 Min Read

Here’s a fun fact: not all Valentine’s Day stories are hot steamy messes of eroticism and romantic escapades. Now that I think about it…do any of them ever really turn out that way?

Well, reality check aside, you can bet your sweet heart-shaped ass that I’ve got a Valentine’s Day tale for you. Even better, I promise it will be safe for all ages to enjoy.

Back in the spring of 2004 I had just mostly graduated1At some point I will tell the tale of how I accidentally graduated without realizing it. from Kansas State University, and was in search of any way possible to not use my physics degree while simultaneously eeking out an existence.

So I found myself in the hunt for some gainful employment, but didn’t have too much clear direction as to what type of jobs to seek out and apply for. One day as I was perusing the online want ads of the local newspaper, I saw a posting by a florist looking for delivery drivers for the three days leading up to and including Valentine’s Day, which happened to fall on a Saturday that year.

Seeing as how I hadn’t landed anything permanent yet, I thought it would be the perfect way to inject a little much-needed cash into my pocket–heck, I hadn’t made a proper grocery store run since mid-December!2I’m not sure if this is a story in it’s own right, but that streak actually lasted until mid May–a solid 5 months of a grown-ass man not buying groceries. It’s one of my more boastable accomplishments, and a strong contender for making it onto my headstone.

It’s not like I had anything else of note to do that V-day. Most of my guy friends were single at that time as well, so the only plans I had were to meet up later the evening of Valentine’s at a random Jamaican-cuisine-serving bar out in the boonies. We were calling it Bro-entine’s Day or Bachelor’s Day or something else obnoxious that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Also, being the ever-over-thinking life philosopher that y’all know and love, I realized that this would be an interesting opportunity of sorts.

Let me reference the ultimate asinine life philosopher and personal idol of mine, Jerry Seinfeld. Those of you familiar with his eponymous TV show may recall the episode The Big Salad,3For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Salad. in which George buys a big salad for Elaine. His flavor-of-the-month girlfriend, Julie, is accompanying him, and when they show up to Jerry’s to deliver it, she is the one who is carrying it and ends up being the one who hands it to Elaine.

Elaine then proceeds to thank Julie–not George, who actually paid for it. Of course, petty hilarity ensues.

The wisdom to be gleaned here is that people often subconsciously attribute credit to the person who delivers something–not the person actually responsible for it. This principle in theory should apply whether it be a big salad, good news, bad news…or, say, flowers and balloons.

So imagine all the warm, positive, and often “romantic” feelings a woman4Or a man, I suppose. might experience upon receiving a lovely bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. Now imagine all those great feelings being subconsciously–and undereservedly–associated with my modestly handsome and youthful face, and perhaps even the sound of my voice.

In the short term, well…you know how they say “don’t shoot the messenger”? I liked to joke that in this case maybe I should be proclaiming to the recipient “Don’t kiss the messenger! J.K. Kidding…you can kiss me if you insist.”

But even better than maybe getting a kiss on the spot, was the Long Game that I was playing.

I need to invoke yet another episode of Seinfeld here, The Junk Mail,5For a plot summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Junk_Mail. in which Elaine inexplicably falls for a very ordinary looking guy, only to eventually find out that she’s so voraciously drawn to him because she recognizes him from a series of T.V. commercials where he plays “The Wiz,” a mascot for an electronics store of the same name.

The idea is that later down the road, if I happened to run into one of the ladies I had previously delivered flowers to while running around town, that they would be overcome by attraction and desire for me.

Now multiply that by the some-odd 50 delivers I would eventually make…yeah, that’s the closest to straight-up Evil Genius that I’ve came in my life. In theory, I could potentially have the legitimate need to “beat them off with a stick.” Too bad–spoiler alert–that investment never paid off…

Okay, philosophical digression aside, I responded to the ad, and as you all already know, after 5 rounds of interviews and 3 background checks, I scored the gig. Well, maybe it was more like half a round of interviews and zero background checks, but that doesn’t have the same zing to it, does it?

The first morning of the gig was a Thursday, and I showed up bright and early at 6:30. In fact, I was the first one there, even beating the shop owner.

He sheepishly greeted me, and explained that the demand for flower delivery before the regular work day started tended to be on the low side, so I might just be hanging out for an hour or so before things would start to pick up.

To my surprise, within about 30 minutes he told me to warm up the Camry, cuz I had my first delivery of the day! I was so pumped and ready to harvest all the undue adoration that I was sure was coming my way.

Except…well, I had better hope that the principles I laid out above wouldn’t hold for that first delivery. Because the last thing I needed was for a random group of friends and family to forever associate me with grief and loss and embalmed loved ones.

Yes, that’s right, my first Valentine’s Day delivery was to a mother ----- funeral home. And they weren’t even open yet, so I had wait around for 10 minutes, and then I had the joy and honor of being in a dimly light funeral parlor at 7:30 in the morning, where the dead definitely outnumbered the living. This was off to a swell start, indeed.

After that, though, the fun business picked up and, honestly, the next 3 days were kind of a blur, with me rushing about, making deliveries all over a 15-mile radius. The only one I really remember is the one I delivered to a girl that I had taken Public Speaking with 4 years earlier. The main reason I remembered her was because she was on K-State’s waterskiing team, and I recall being shocked to learn that we–Kansas State–had a waterskiing team. Anyways, at least we recognized each other enough that it wasn’t too awkward of an encounter.

The funny part about all of this is that I unwisely hadn’t clarified the terms of compensation beforehand, and it wasn’t until I was getting ready to head out for my final delivery run that I learned how much I would be getting paid. The deal was that I would get $5 for every successful delivery–which was actually a bit more than I had expected. I must have made ~45 runs because I calculated that I would pull in about $225 for my three days’ worth of work. It was definitely a pleasant surprise!

Though I was running a little late, I just needed to make 5 or 6 more deliveries, and then I would be able to go celebrate Celibacy Day with a cold beer, some jerked chicken, and the company of my homies.

I had gotten to the next to last delivery, which was actually a double delivery. Some thoughtful husband and father had ordered flowers for both his wife and his wrong daughter. I found it to be a very sweet gesture.

Now there are three important details here. First, I had parked across the street from their house. Second, since I had to deliver two vases, I had decided to carry them in the now almost-empty cardboard box that I had been using to safely and securely shuttle around my deliveries. Lastly, it had snowed a few days earlier, and so there was some hard-packed snow (now ice) against the curb, though the street itself was clear.

After making the delivery, I was walking back to my car with the empty box in my hands, and I needed to gingerly step over the strip of snow that was against the curb.

It was just wide enough that I couldn’t step over it, so I daintily hopped over it…

The next thing I remember is the box going flying in the air and my body shifting into a horizontal position about 3 feet in the air before gravity took back over and violently pulled me back to Earth face-down.

Apparently when I had hopped into the street I came down on some black ice, causing my legs to slip out from underneath me in very extreme fashion.

It really was a blur, but the main thing I recall is my right hand landing first, basically karate-chopping the street. It was lightly sore, but then again, so was the rest of my body.

Not being seriously injured, I picked myself up in embarrassment–though I’m pretty sure no one saw me–and picked up my box and hopped in my car. The final delivery was thankfully more uneventful, and I headed back for one last check-in with the florist to give them my total delivery tally.

I met up with my buddies and enjoyed a good meal with them, and I related to them how my little flower delivery adventure had gone, including the surprise twist at the end there.

That night when I got ready to hop in the shower, I discovered that, in addition to scraping my cheek and landing on my hand, I somehow had a long scratch down my chest. Nothing major…just odd. My theory was that I had slid forward as I landed, and that there must have been a little jagged bit of ice sticking up, slicing me gently as I slid across it.

As they say, fun times were had by all…

Of course it would have been wonderful if this here story ended with me incurring the most minimal of injuries and walking away from the experience with a cool wad of $225 in my pocket. That would have been great.

However, after a week, I noticed my hand was still a little achey, so since I was still enrolled in a photography class at the college, I took advantage of my access to the student health clinic.

The key point here is that “access” does NOT equal “coverage” or “insurance” or anything like that. Having my hand x-rayed on the first visit was reasonable, but had I known that I would be paying out of my empty-ass pockets for every ----- thing, I would have told the doc he could shove the follow-up x-ray somewhere only his licensed and trained proctologist could find it.

It turns that I had actually fractured the pinky-bone in my hand, and was prescribed a custom-formed plastic half-cast for a few weeks. So it was probably overall better for my health that I did have my injury checked out.

But after all was said and done, I got a bill in the mail for…$205.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

After taking into account the gas I burned making those deliveries, I was exactly $0 the richer for the whole episode.

In the end I had broken both my hand and dead even.

Unfortunately, I was too ----- hungry to appreciate the irony–and the beautiful symmetry–of the situation.

But really, the point of the story is you couldn’t fault me if I were militantly pro-“Medicare For All.” Of course the version I would be promoting would be retroactive at least 16 years…

I really, really want my hard-earned $225 back–adjusted for inflation, and with interest, of course.

Hmmph. That’s interesting…maybe–just maybe–I am but a bougie capitalist after all…

Happy Valentine’s Day, all you money-lovers!

Content created on: 7 February 2020 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Just Another Kimchi Chronicle

6 February 2020 / / 0 Comments
8 Min Read

Editor’s note: This is yet another entry in the saga of my Kimchi Baron of the Interwebs aspirations, aka The Prissy Pet Project. Perhaps you need to read the most recent journal entry, Work-From-Throne Job Opportunity Available, to get slightly more up to speed.

The short version of where we’re at in the process is that I’m in the middle of building up a following for my Tumblr blog, kimchi-and-keto. In the meantime, I need to set up an internet storefront that acts as a portal in which customers can buy all sorts of kimchi, etc. via Amazon.

[expand title=”Click here if you want a few more details…”]

Currently I have been following a random online guide to making money via Tumblr.1Tumblr, a rather popular micro-blogging site

As a reminder here is the basic checklist of such schemes:2All screen shots should be assumed to be from https://www.onlinedimes.com/how-make-money-on-tumblr/

The short version of this strategy is this:

  1. Find some niche you like, and start a Tumblr blog related to that topic.
  2. Using some automated tools to post ad infinitum, build up a critical amount of Tumblr followers (50+). Don’t bother with original content–just repost from other like-minded blogs.
  3. Set up a basic Amazon store selling products related to your blog’s theme/brand.
  4. Use your automated posting tools to advertise your store on all your posts as they spread through Tumblr like a virus.
  5. Profit.3To be clear, the profit is via a small commission of 2-7% for everything you sell via Amazon–it’s not actually your products in the store.
  6. Repeat Step 5 without lifting a finger.

[/expand]

Last I left you, I was reveling in the fact that my main task at hand–trying to get people to follow me–could be done from the comfort and convenience of my own crapper…

Journal Date: 27 January 2020 (Monday)

After a little over a week of relatively active pursuit of Tumblr followers, I noticed that some of my new followers were ones that I had not solicited at all.

In other words, I was starting to see some “organic” growth in my fan base. I have no idea how they were coming across my blog, but I do offer a lot of pretty pictures of food, so I’m not totally surprised that people are finding themselves attracted to kimchi-and-keto.

I tallied up the new users I didn’t recognize, and concluded that of the 14 new users I had since the last update, I was pretty sure that 7 of them were ones that I hadn’t put direct effort into obtaining. It’s BOGO on new users I guess!

More specifically, it was 7 new users over the course of 7 days, so I’m thinking that if I’m getting 1 new user every day on average without putting in extra work, then maybe I can start shifting my focus elsewhere…

And there are definitely “elsewheres” where I need to start putting some serious effort into. Also, money. I need to start putting money into other efforts.

There were two expenses that Franklin, our online guide, had included in his Tumblr domination plan, but I had originally balked at just dropping money before having an idea of whether or not it was worth it.

However, I think in the back of my mind I’ve finally resolved to just jump right in and go ahead and invest $20 in Queue+ and $70 on a good theme. Glancing at one of the themes previously, I realized that it definitely offered a lot of valuable features that there was no way in hell I would be able to create myself, even I had the skillz already. It’s all about added value, yo.

First, let’s get that theme so we can start building a real website with real products, and at least have a non-zero chance of someone visiting it and patronizing us. Here is the link as prescribed by the aforementioned guide: https://codecanyon.net/item/woozone-amazon-associates-bundle-pack/11240475. Clicking on it now, and…

…that’s definitely not that same site that came up last time I followed that link.

Oh, just great. When I finally get the gumption to pull the trigger on buying a theme, the hosting site decided to experience some downtime.4Note that it was back online when I checked the following day. So good news there… Goddammit.

Okay, so maybe that’s I sign that I shouldn’t focus on that just yet. My motivation for paying for the premium version of Queue+, is that with the free version I’m limited to queueing up 600 posts at any given time. Now that may seem like a lot, but when posting one every 15 minutes, that comes out to roughly 6 days of auto-pilot before having to load it up again.

But I’m most decidedly at the point where reloading it is more of a distraction, and also I’m starting to run low, so now seems like a good time to drop $20 and then load the mother ----- up so I don’t have to touch it again for months.

Upgrading now, and…

For the record, it’s $27 a year now (instead of $20 whenever the Guide was put together)…oh well. Okay, time to load this ----- up as much as possible!

OMFG, trying to add from this archive: https://keto.tumblr.com/archive/2016/2/filter-by/photo but it won’t let me select any posts.

Argghh! It won’t even let me select a single one. Dammit. Why me? Why now?

*Does a quick Google search; only glances at results*

Oh GOOD ----- LORD. The second I drop money on Queue+, they get shut down for having an illicit cryptocurrency script running in the background.

I don’t know if they’re shut down for good or what, but sounds like that I could have loaded up my Queue a few hours earlier than when I tried, and at least had that going strong (it seems the extension is the offender).

This is what happens when you hesitate, folks. I’m getting screwed over as punishment for my hemming and hawing, I guess.

To buy me some time, I’ve throttled back how often I post, changing it to every 30 minutes instead of every 15, thereby getting double mileage out of my remaining stock.

Journal Date: 28 January 2020 (Tuesday)

When I search google for news of Archive Poster being taken down from the Chrome Store, I only find articles dating from around December 2017/January 2018, so I’m wondering if that’s a red herring?

But I’m trying it on [a much more up to date computer I have access to] and it’s not working there either…I also try logging out of kimchi-and-keto and logging in as kimchiandketo, but still no dice.  Seriously What The Fuck?

So, good news: the current Archive Poster is not the previous naughty version that got kicked off the Chrome Store. Bad news: it stopped working for no apparent reason.

I’m seriously freaking out here, because having a copious amount of automated posts are the critical marketing avenue for my forthcoming kimchi store. And if I can’t add posts to my Q+ en masse, then the whole project becomes too tedious and time consuming for me to continue…

Journal Date: 31 Friday 2020 (Friday)

I’m down to less than 10 posts in my Q+ and things are looking pretty bleak. Fortunately, I found an instance where the Archive Poster works, although it just lets me add from my current feed…and I’m following so many random-ass blogs, that only about half (or less) of what shows up in my feed is on-brand enough for me to reblog.

It will do in a pinch, and I’ve added enough to last me over the weekend…but only because I’ve throttled all the way back to posting every 90 minutes now. Oof.

I’m actually thiiiiiiis close to figuring out how to reverse-engineer these cursed Chrome extensions, and figure out how to fix the stupid thing, given that I’ve found one similar example where the code actually worked. I’m telling you, knowledge is power, and once I get my web-dev coding chops in order, I’m going to be a ----- god.

But that’ll have to wait, because, yeah, I tried it and I’m definitely in over my head.

Journal Date: 3 February 2020 (Monday)

On an unrelated note, the Chiefs just won the Super Bowl in heart-stopping fashion last night, so hellz yeah that was pretty awesome.

But back to the crisis at hand. Here is my Queue+ dashboard:

The Prissy Pet Project is at Death’s doorstep here, people.

However, it turns out that the Chiefs’ world championship in football Americano wasn’t the only awesome thing that happened. After checking regularly over the past week, it appears the Archive Poster extension is back to working!!! Have no idea what was wrong…but what I found humorous was that the fiasco was chronicled in the Review section for Archive Poster on the Chrome Store (be sure to read them bottom-to-top, and also at the time of this screen capture, “5 days ago” was actually around the 1st or 2nd of February):

Anyways, to quote Mr. Pacanelili above, “thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.” Time to make hay while the sun still shines!

*Goes to ----- town adding posts to Q+*

Later that night:

I’ve turned back up my posting rate to every 30 minutes, so that comes out to a burn-down rate of 48 per day. So I should be good for another ~137 days. Heck, yes.

Given that I’ve been on autopilot for about a week in regards to working towards my first goal of attaining 50 followers, I figure I would give you an update-update.

But first, I’ve posted my Tumblr dashboard below, tracking the number of Notes,5Number of times that people have either liked, commented, or reblogged one of my posts. which is pretty much directly proportional to the number of Posts. You can very clearly see where my posting volume/frequency just fell off a cliff thanks to Archive Poster’s busted ass:

Although I just realized that the picture above kind of spoils the drama of revealing how many followers I now have, I’ll share the New Follower (over the last month) dashboard with you anyways:

I’m up to 446Actually 47 at the writing of this post on 6 Feb. overall, and holding pretty steady at a do-nothing rate of ~1 a day!

Now, FINALLY I can get back around to try putting my kimchi-themed website together.

Wish me luck! I just hope that my next update doesn’t end with the following:

The point of the story is, maybe you should listen to the Universe when it tells you pretty clearly to stop whatever the ----- that is that you’re up to.

If you finally are motivated enough to take long put-off action, only to find yourself thoroughly cock-blocked by God-with-a-capital-D-so-my-Censorship-plugin-doesn’t-bleep-him-or-is-it-really-her-out and/or technology, well, maybe that’s a sign you should have quit while you were ahead…

definitely how I hope to never end one of these blog posts

Content created on: 6 February 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Killing Them Hardly

2 February 2020 / / 0 Comments
7 Min Read

If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m particularly fascinated by dreams. I find that they provide an interesting–and sometimes terrifyingly honest–peek into our psyches. It’s like saying to your Innermost Self, “No, tell me how you really feel about me.”

The downside to recounting dreams to the rest of the world is that so, so much of them make sense only while you’re experiencing them; the narrative within the dream is consistent enough in the moment, but the second you wake up and and say that first detail aloud (even if just to yourself), you realize, “Hey that makes no ----- sense at all!” At which point it becomes much more of a fustercluck describing to someone else what that experience was like.

I think for this very reason I don’t share here nearly as many dreams I would really like to. I do it for the sake of you, Dear Readers. After all, haven’t you suffered enough trying to make sense of my stories that really happened?

Well, I suppose that’s enough foreplay–let me get to the dream that I’m eager to regale you with today. I was going to share this one with last week’s dream-themed post, but I ran over my self-imposed time-limit. Let’s see if I can keep it short and sweet this time around, ya?

It wasn’t but a week or two ago when I found myself in a classroom setting that seemed to be on the border between a university and a medical center. So far, this makes sense, as I have worked in such a setting for the better part of the last 15 years.

Of course I hadn’t picked up on the detail that I was the only adult in the classroom besides the teacher, though I was clearly one of the students. Actually I’m not 100% certain I was going all Billy Madison with a bunch of 8-year-olds, because I also got the distinct vibe that I wasn’t able to communicate fluently, so there’s a pretty good chance that I was in, of all things, a Spanish-speaking elementary classroom located on a medical campus. Making sense so far…

We were reading from a classic novel as a class, and as a character appeared in the story, the next student with the same gender as that character would be assigned their part for the rest of the story. I was sitting in the front row of the classroom, on the far left side save for two young Mexican school girls further to my left.

All that to say, as soon as the first male character–a young boy–had a speaking part, the orating duties fell on my shoulders. I remember having a real hard time getting through the line or two in front of me. ‘Twas but a real trip on ye ol’ Struggle Bus, indeed.

We read some more, and it wasn’t but a minute or two before my character had another line. However, this time I simply for the life of me could not read the words on the page.

So I improvised.

While my goal was to get me out of the situation with some light humor, my definitely-not-in-the-text zinger turned out to be something of an over-achiever.

I was expecting maybe just a chuckle or two from the crowd, but instead I ----- killed it.

I mean, I had everyone in tears from laughing so hard. The teacher was on the ground unable to breathe. It was ----- near a literal riot–one that lasted for a good 2-3 minutes. Mind you, that’s an eternity in comedy-land.

So though I wasn’t in it for the compliments, I gotta say, the response I got felt good. Real good. I sat there, with my eyes closed, literally basking in my own glory, letting my ego soak up every last drop.

I remember thinking to myself, “This must be what it feels like to be a comic1Or comedien/comedienne to those not in the industry. when they tell a joke that just absolutely slays the audience…I think I could get used to this.”

My thought immediately after that, though, was “I gotta tell somebody about this!”

Since the Boss Lady–bless her soul–was the first person to come to mind, it reminded me that I was married, thus confirming that indeed I was a grown-ass man, in a classroom full of kids, in a foreign land. No, nothing odd about that…

At that point, the scene segued into later that night in the same classroom, where it was just me and few other random students doing our own unrelated things.

For my part, I was obsessed with writing down my unicorn of a one-liner before it escaped me. I found myself wandering around the room in search of a pen or pencil, when I came across the desk where I had been sitting.

To my delight, I found the scrap paper that I had been doodling on when I had uttered my epic phrase. Hilariously, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “I better save this–the historians are going to want to preserve this piece of comedic history.” Yeah, I know, a bit presumptuous, but it made complete sense in that moment.

On it I found a bunch of trigonometric diagrams and sketches, and scrawled at the top, the phrase “Uncle-Uncle B.J.” I have no idea why, but I found that phrase to be utterly hilarious as well. What can I say? I was on fire that day.

But at that point, I still hadn’t written the phrase down, and I just knew I was going to hate myself forever if I somehow forgot it. While my insurance policy was to just keep repeating it over and over quietly to myself, I just couldn’t take any chances.

Right about that time I had found a pencil, and just as I was about to jot it on my collector’s edition piece of scratch paper…the power went out campus-wide. Of course it would. How timely.

I remember having the sense that I, along with the other few students, really needed to make our way to another, safer, location on campus where everybody else was. That detail doesn’t matter too much, but my guess was that they were all at a football non-Americano2I.e. “soccer”.game.

We found our way out a side door and could see some stadium-like lights off in the distance, and determined that’s where we needed to head. Unfortunately, we were completely surrounded by a maze of tennis courts.

While the other students headed off to get lost, I stayed behind, desperately trying to write down My Precious words. However, given that I was using a pencil, laying on a not-so-smooth tennis court, and had virtually no light of which to speak, I wasn’t able to get more than about a word and a half down, so I had to resort back to muttering it to myself while I tried to find my way to somewhere–anywhere–else that had light and a smooth surface.

I eventually found another building, and so I let myself in via a nondescript side door, hoping that I wouldn’t be more lost inside than I had been outside.

But as soon as the door shut behind me, the loudest, most piercing alarm I had ever heard blew out my right ear drum, as I was still slightly turned with that side towards the door.

Simultaneously, as the power came back on, a blinding light/shock wave combination utterly blasted my right side.

The only thing I could think in that moment was “nuclear explosion?” and “welp, I guess this is my death.”

However, I remained conscious as it felt like the right side of my face was being melted off, so I shielded that side with my arms as best as I could, and kind of leaned into the curiously continuous wall of energy.3Ultimately, the best waking theory I have for what happened was that I had wandered into a particle accelerator lab, and I happened to be right in the path of the particle beam as it unexpectedly turned back on with the power. But it was never revealed in my dream what had happened, so I’m just guessing here.

This went on for about a minute, the whole while I kept thinking “Am I dead yet? No? How am I still alive? Okay…now am I dead? What? Not yet? Dear lord put me out of my misery already.”

Next thing I remember is opening my eyes to find that, no, I was not in heaven nor hell, but rather in (what I presumed to be) a burn victims’ ward of a hospital.

Two nurse-type ladies were with me and saw that I had came to, but continued to discuss me in the third person. I soon realized that one of them didn’t have any legs, so I wonder if they were not nurses, but rather victims of the unidentified blast as well.

One of them said, “Well, no, he sure isn’t dead, but we’ll see yet if he can handle being like this the rest of this life.”

Though I didn’t have a mirror, it become clear to me real quickly that I had suffered third-degree burns to my body, but especially to my head and face.

As I went to make a comment to one of them, much to my horror I discovered that my lips had been melted off, and I would never be able to speak again.

Noooooooo! The world must know of my turn as the Wittiest Man-child in the World!

I tried desperately speaking, whispering, grunting–anything–but I had been rendered a completely ineffective communicator. I’m not clear on this point, but I’m thinking the fingers on each of my hands must have been melded together, because you would think I would at least be able to write it down, right?

The remainder of the dream was mostly a Rocky-style montage of me going through vocal physical therapy, trying to regain my ability to speak. I was on a mission: nothing was going to stop me from telling me somebody how funny I had been that one time.

I don’t ever remember fully gaining the ability to speak. However, right before I awoke, the last scene involved me walking to some sort of rally with a group of prep-school teen-aged boys. The last thing I remember is approaching them, hell-bent on telling them the Wittiest Quip in the World. I just knew they were going to appreciate it.

As I neared them, I opened what used to be where my lips were, but before I could moan my line, I saw fear flash across their faces.

Oh, right. I forgot. I look like my face has bent by the flames of hell…

And that’s where the dream ended. It’s perhaps the most unfulfilled I have ever felt after awakening from a dream.

However, thanks to repeating it to myself over and over, I could remember what the line was, and could tell people in the real world!

Before I could forget, I turned to my phone and opened up my Notes app, where I furiously tapped out those words which would change the course of comedy forever:

In a young Dickens accent: "I'm sorry I don't have a very big Johnson, sir. I've never had much of a Willy on me."

Behold World, I have created the first-ever Dick(ens) joke.4Seriously, though, Dream B.J.?

Yeah, anyways, still not seeing how this could fail, I tried that out on the Boss Lady as soon as I got the chance…

Turns out, it wasn’t quite as funny in real life. Go figure.

It was definitely a bummer to realize that I may not have come up with the One Joke to Kill Them All after all…

But, hey, look on the bright side: at least I still got my big, beautiful lips, right?

Content created on: 29 January & 1 February 2020 (Wednesday/Saturday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Where Are My ----- Pajamas

30 January 2020 / / 4 Comments
2 Min Read

Growing up, my mom tended to keep the thermostat in our house set on the lower end of the tolerable spectrum.

One winter, when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I couldn’t take it any more and demanded she at least buy me some warm pajamas.

Despite my melodramatic pleading for her to show the slightest hint of humanity, she wouldn’t budge.

So I resorted to sobbing and crying, hoping to effectively play the pity card. Yet, still she resisted.

I only had one card left to play at this point: faux anger. Now, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t threatening violence. And I’m pretty sure that the Phillips-head1An unnecessary detail. Joke’s on you! screwdriver was already in my hand before the start of this particular conversation.

Regardless of why there was a screwdriver in my chubby little hand, I pulled a Daniel Tiger:

…minus the whole namaste anger-management breathing exercise bit.

I looked at her and proclaimed, “I’m so mad at you, I could bend this screwdriver in half!”

Calling my bluff, Mom retorted, “If you can bend that screwdriver in half, I’ll drive to New York2(from Kansas) tonight and buy you some new pajamas!”

Not one to back down from a ridiculous and improbable challenge, I gripped that screwdriver with both hands, stuck my bare foot in the middle, and straight-up bent that screwdriver in half around my foot.

We both stood there in shock for about a minute before I made some smart-ass comment like “I’ll be waiting in the car…”

As you can imagine, I never got those velveteen pajamas that I had been promised.

But, Mom, if you’re listening (and I know you are), I just want to say, “Where are my ----- pajamas?!?”

J.K. Kidding. I’m a grown-ass man now, and can drive myself to New York to buy some Daniel Tiger pajamas…if they make them in adult sizes, that is.

Nonetheless, the point of the story is: don’t make bets you can’t make good on. And also don’t underestimate the strength of your Kindergartner.

Content created on: 29 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Kicked On A Plane

26 January 2020 / / 2 Comments
5 Min Read

Here’s a fun fact: something you may not know about me is that I’m a Caucasian male.

Not to minimize the troubles I’ve had in this world–I’ve had my share of true sorrow, heartache, and hardship–but sometimes I have to take a step back and acknowledge how being a white dude has affected my life story.

And the point of this exercise is not to come to the conclusion “thank the Lordy Jesus that I was born with a lilly-white tally-whacker1A regional American colloquialism for the male genitalia. in 20th Century U.S. of A!”

Rather, my hope is that my Tales from the Light Side will serve as a sharp and satirically self-deprecating contrast to the real issues that affect the many many people who don’t share the same demographics as I do.

Here’s to dreaming of world where all our kids can be plagued by asinine, non-existential dilemmas…

A few years ago, I flew out to Kansas to pack up my Beloved Mother into the largest UHaul available, and move her back to the small North Carolina hamlet I call home.

I was flying on Good Friday, so it was no surprise that the airports were hustling and a bustling. I had an early afternoon layover in Atlanta, where all that hustle and bustle caught up with Delta Airlines, as my flight to Wichita was overbooked.

Well, what do airlines do when the have too many passengers and not enough seats? They ask for volunteers to take a later flight, occasionally offering airline vouchers as compensation.

Now, I had heard about such things from one of my older brothers, who, being a single basketball coach, travelled often. Critically for him, he often had the flexibility in his schedule to take a later flight–and the $200-$700 in future plane tickets in the process.

I was always so jealous–y’all know how much I love being clever, and getting hundreds of dollars in travel for a few hours of your time always seemed like shrewd economics to me.

Anyways, after multiple calls for volunteers, the voucher reward had gone up to $600. For some reason, as I often have in life, I had initially automatically ruled out the possibility of me being one of the lucky ones to cash in on the opportunity. But once I heard $600, I started to seriously–and nervously–rethink my position on the matter.

I texted my mom real quick and told her about the situation, and asked whether it made a difference if I showed up at 7 pm or 11 pm. She told me to go for it…now I just had to work up the courage to actually take action!

I guess a little context might be useful here, and that is that unless I’m in a situation that I’m fairly comfortable in, I tend to be a shy, timid, uncertain and indecisive chap. So it actually would be quite the big deal if I had the cajones to put myself out there and volunteer for the later flight.

After about 5 minutes of self-pep-talking (and hoping/dreading that they would find all the volunteers they needed in the meantime), I finally worked up the nerve to stroll up to the check-in station2I’m sure that’s not quite the right term, but can’t seem to come up with the proper one in the moment. and casually ask if they needed any more volunteers.

I say “casually,” but I’m actually lying through my teeth. I’m pretty sure my voice cracked into a high-pitched screech mid-sentence, as if my testicles were just now dropping, no doubt confusing the airline clerk3Again, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right term. in the process.

To my horror/relief, she said that yes, actually, they needed one more volunteer. So I replied with something suave and relaxed, implying that I do this thing all the time: “Uh, I, er, volunteer then. I want to be that last person. Please?”

She graciously smiled and took my info, thanking me in the process.

And then we awkwardly stood there, since clearly I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.

Again, she was more than kind enough to tell me that I needed to hang out by the gate until boarding time, in case they had room for me on the flight after all.

So, I just chilled right by the gate first waiting for our boarding time to begin, then patiently waiting as all those non-$600-airline-voucher-having suckers boarded the plane.

As the line was slowing to a trickle, I heard the flight attendant call my name, saying that I was cleared to board.

Dazed and confused, I wandered on to the plane, slowly realizing what was happening.

At the same time I was realizing how much I did not want to be on that plane. I had finally worked up the courage to earn a coveted airline voucher, and now it was being viciously ripped from my hands. They might as well have been ripping my heart out while they were at it. Jerks.

I think this accurately describes my innermost feelings in that moment:

I was surprisingly emotional about the situation. As found my way to my seat, I actually had to fight back the tears.

Of course, it probably didn’t help that I had already bragged to the Boss Lady about scoring a $600 voucher, and now I would have to come home to her empty-handed. So not only had I disappointed myself, but I would be letting her down as well.

I was also surprisingly angry with myself, feeling like I could have at least put up a fight had I not been such a pushover panty-waste.

So I just sat there in my seat waiting for take-off, a whole hurricane of emotions and thoughts on the inside.

But as I did, I noticed that a couple of the flight attendants were confusedly counting seats in my area.

And in that moment, timid ol’ me said “Screw4This was supposed to say “fuck” here, but my Censorship plugin didn’t catch it. So here we are, using “screw” instead. Oh well. this. I’m the master of my own destiny, and if I have to manufacture a way off this plane, I will!”

Well, it wasn’t that dramatic in reality. But I did indeed take charge of my life in the moment, refusing be the victim of an on-time arrival at my destination.

I wasn’t going to let nobody kick me on to that ----- plane.

I persistently tried to get one of the attendant’s attention until they finally came my way.

“Excuse me, but were you expecting to find an empty seat back here? Because I’m pretty sure I’m sitting in a seat that rightfully belongs to someone else…”

After checking with the other confused attendant, it turned out that indeed, they had prematurely put me on the plane, and was extremely grateful that I was giving up my seat (again).

Once I got the official go-ahead to deboard the plane, I grabbed my carryon and strolled off that plane, ever so high on testosterone, adrenaline, and life. I was brimming with the confidence, like I had three tally-whackers…

And in an even more Caucasian turn of events, shortly thereafter I found out that for whatever reason the voucher would be for $800 instead of $600. ----- awesome.

Given that I now had 3+ hours on my hands to kill, I found my way to one of the nicer restaurants in the Atlanta airport and treated myself to a $70 meal. After all, I was still over $700 richer than when I woke up that morning. Plus, you gotta celebrate life’s little victories, ya know?

Several months later at the beginning of September, me and the family flew out to California for a cousin’s wedding. Thanks to my sweet, sweet $800 voucher, it only cost us ~$500 for the 3 of us to fly non-stop to and from LAX.

While there, one of our freer days happened to align with the first day of back-to-school for the students in Southern California.

Seeing a prime opportunity, I promptly used the funds that I didn’t have to spend on plane tickets, and dragged my family to local, notoriously over-crowded amusement park…on one of the least busiest days of the year.

Yes, my friends, in perhaps the most white ending possible for a story like this…

I went to ----- Disneyland.

Content created on: 22 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

I Had A Dream…Or Two

23 January 2020 / / 2 Comments
4 Min Read

Okay, so maybe the title is a little misleading, in that I’ve thrown in a bonus kid-centric vignette alongside the couple of dreams that, in telling them, seem to be a totally appropriate way to celebrate the recently observed Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, I took our two girls, The Elder (6) and The Younger (2) to the grocery store as per our usual routine.

However, while we normally go right around lunch or early afternoon, this particular day we had gone closer to dinner time and the natives were getting restless with hunger.

As I was loading them up The Elder made a not so unreasonable request.

The Elder: “Dad, do you think we could snack on something on the way home.”

Me: “Sure. Like what?”

The Elder: “Oh, how about some of the nuts you bought?”

Me: “Um…oh yeah, the cashews? Let me get some out of the back.”

Moments later…

Daddy’s nuts! Daddy’s nuts! We want Daddy’s nuts!

The Elder and The Younger, chanting loudly in unison

Me: “Shhhhh! That doesn’t mean the same thing to an adult as it does to you!”

Frankly,1Pun intended? I’m just relieved that happened in the privacy of our car and not in the middle of the store…

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that, for whatever reason, the Boss Lady needed to get vanity plates for her car.

Of course, there are many details of the dream that make no ----- sense–it was a dream after all–so I’ll try to keep it to either the interesting and/or relevant ones.

So she had to get vanity plates. Don’t know why it wasn’t optional, but whatever. We found ourselves in a…billiards parlor? I’m pretty sure that’s not what it was, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it.

We were there with 3-4 other people, most of whom we either knew at some point in our lives, or perhaps recognized from T.V., and we had formed a committee to tackle the dilemma at hand.

…along with an antique fortune-telling gumball machine. Yup. I’m pretty sure one of those was there, too, and was an integral part of the brainstorming process.

All that to say, we already had one pretty solid suggestion on hand,2Images generated at https://www.acme.com/licensemaker/

when inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks. As I went to blurt it out, the 55-year-old woman in the committee barely beat me to the punch, word-for-word.

I was like, “That was literally exactly what I was about to say! OMG, you stole the words out of my mouth!” Apparently, I desperately wanted credit for the idea.

Upon waking up, though, I realized that the debate over who got credit for option #2 was a moot point. After all, it was my dream, and we’ve already settled the debate over who gets credit in such situations.

Me. T’would be yours truly who gets sole credit for option #2:

I guess my subconscious decided to make no bones about the reality of the financial dynamics in my marriage…

When I awoke in the morning, I couldn’t wait to tell the Boss Lady about my witty AF dream. I was even more excited to see which one she would hypothetically choose.

While she chuckled at both ideas, she has been coy about which one she would actually go with, if forced to decide between the two.

Which is probably all for the better. As you may have noted, the simulated license plates from above are based on a vintage design from a bye-gone era when verbosity and vanity were not forced to be mutually exclusive. Sadly, modern North Carolina license plates are unable to contain the genius vanity-plate making skills I bring to the table.

In reality, her two choices could only be realized as:

or…

Huh…I think the idea gets a little lost in translation…

Damn me, and my unrealistic dreams.

In our last vignette, I hearken back to a dream I had several years ago, one which I tweeted about into the void of Twitter from a secret, follower-less account.

In it I was hanging out with a friend of from college. Since he still lives in Kansas, and I in North Carolina, we only see each other every couple of years.

In the course of catching up, I found out that [the dream version of him] had left his wife for…his mother-in-law.

Needless to say, I was shocked.

I was even more shocked, however, at how much sense his logic made:

Yeah, but I get to live in a really nice house.

dream version of my friend who literally shacked up with his mother-in-law

Content created on: 22 January 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Work-From-Throne Job Opportunity Available

19 January 2020 / / 0 Comments
10 Min Read

Editor’s Note: This is a direct follow up to my most recent post, Taking Over the Mean Streets of Tumblr, documenting my attempt to get my piece of the kimchi market pie. Actually, it’s probably more apt to say that I’m trying to expand the kimchi market and then promptly fill that need, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves, now isn’t it? If you feel like you need more back story as to how we got here in the first place, please see Epitaph, The Prissy Pet Project, and Cuckoo for Kimchi Puffs.

As always, it’s good to at least lightly refresh my Dear Readers as to what this whole kimchi/Tumblr pursuit is about.

If you have already the preceding post, you can skip this next bit, as I’m just repeating myself. If you haven’t read that post, and would like to, click here. To get those details without reading a whole ‘nother post, click below to expand that background info.

[expand title=”Yes! Bring me up to speed!”]

One of the Four Pillars of Pointellism1I’m appropriating this term from the art community for my own purposes. Get over it. is to provide resources for people who are interested in non-traditional money-producing ventures, but don’t necessarily want to risk wasting their time and/or reputation in the process.

That’s where I swoop in, to investigate less-than-sure-bets and then expound upon my misadventures at medium length. Then the readers can decide whether or not such schemes are a good fit for them.

Currently I have been following a random online guide to making money via Tumblr.2Tumblr, a rather popular micro-blogging site

As a reminder here is the basic checklist of such schemes:3All screen shots should be assumed to be from https://www.onlinedimes.com/how-make-money-on-tumblr/

The short version of this strategy is this:

  1. Find some niche you like, and start a Tumblr blog related to that topic.
  2. Using some automated tools to post ad infinitum, build up a critical amount of Tumblr followers (50+). Don’t bother with original content–just repost from other like-minded blogs.
  3. Set up a basic Amazon store selling products related to your blog’s theme/brand.
  4. Use your automated posting tools to advertise your store on all your posts as they spread through Tumblr like a virus.
  5. Profit.4To be clear, the profit is via a small commission of 2-7% for everything you sell via Amazon–it’s not actually your products in the store.
  6. Repeat Step 5 without lifting a finger.

[/expand]

Journal Date: 29 November 2019 (Friday)

For a fuller description of my activity leading up and including this day, this was covered in my preceding post.

The short version, though, is that I had set up several days worth of automatic posts to my Tumblr blog, kimchiandketo, and with that rolling it was time to start making some internet friends, whom in turn I could try to get addicted to kimchi with me as their trusted supplier…

Journal Date: 30 November 2019 (Saturday)

Well, the next phase of my Tumblr/Amazon domination plan is to build a Tumblr following. Like most social media popularity contest games, this involves Liking/Following/Commenting/Reblogging, etc.

My Infallible Guide recommends using another automated online tool called TumblrJazz…but that costs $70 as well. There’s no way I’m going to be out $150 this quickly before I have more solid evidence this will be profitable. It’s not so much that I’m doubting Sifu Franklin’s holy money-making methods, it’s more that I pulled the kimchi idea out of my ass, and therefore my confidence in it’s marketability still needs to be proven.

As it turns out, all that doesn’t matter yet, because I ran into my first important lesson related to this project. You see, I had previously set up a prissypetproject Tumblr blog, and so when I went to try to set up kimchiandketo, they noted that my particular email already had a primary blog associated with it.

“But no problem!” they said. “You can set up all the secondary blogs you like!”

And that’s exactly what I did.

However, when I went to Like somebody else’s post (in hopes of them Following me), it would show up as “prissypetproject liked this post.”

The hell?!? Well, after about an hour of going in circles trying to figure out how to exclusively operate as kimchiandketo when Liking posts and such, I finally uncovered a very unpleasant truth: you can only Like/Follow/Comment and otherwise socially interact on Tumblr under the moniker of your primary blog.

No exceptions. No work-arounds. You’re just screwed if you want to do otherwise.

I’ll let a raw quote from my digital journal convey the je ne sais quoi5Yeah…that’s not what that really means… of that moment:

OH GODDAMMIT, I’ve been liking and following as prissypetproject instead of kimchiandketo.  Need to redo all these…

According to this article, all my hard work thus far is fucked.

I need my [kimchiandketo] blog to be the primary blog, and you can’t convert from secondary to primary–WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT.

My Evernote “Prissy Pet Project” journal

Journal Date: 3 January 2020 (Friday)

Welp, it’s a new year, and I figured I might as well get around to taking a fresh crack at building a Tumblr brand (don’t want to leave my Dear Readers–and the Boss Lady–hanging too long).

As you can tell from above, I wasn’t too pleased with Tumblr’s asinine rules regarding secondary blogs being treated as second-class citizens…or more appropriately, non-citizens with very few basic rights.

The gap in activity on this project, however, was more due to the hectic holiday season rather than any feelings of ill-will and/or crushed spirits.

This time around I signed up with a virgin email address and staked my claim to kimchi-and-keto.tumblr.com.

See what I did there? I added dashes in between the words, which is actually good for readability, but is a bit more cumbersome to verbally convey the address to a supposedly interested listener:

Yeah, you can check out my butt-health blog at ‘kimchi and keto’ on Tumblr–and that’s with dashes between ‘kimchi’ and ‘and’, and ‘and’ and ‘keto’.

Got it? Good!

That annoying guy who won’t shut the f*ck up about his blog

Also, as a programmer, I abhor dashes, eschewing them for the much more stable underscore (“_”) instead. But that’s another store that I don’t see to have any relation to what is happening here…pardon the digression.

The long and the short of it is that it took about 1 hour, 45 minutes to get back to the point where I was with kimchiandketo, with roughly the same design and posts in my Queue+ queue. Not too bad…

Figure 1. The Humble Beginnings of a soon-to-be Global Gut-Health Powerhouse.

Journal Date: 4-18 January 2020 (Sat-Sat)

These past two weeks has been basically trying to come up with terms to search to find blogs/posts to Follow/Like/Reblog in hopes of steadily building up a following manually–screw TumblrJazz and their $70 ransom!

The game plan is to target an eclectic array of demographics who I think might be possibly converted to the Gospel of Kimchi:

  • Foodies
  • Hipsters
  • People Who Often Diet and Love to Talk About It
  • Fitness Buffs
  • Wellness Buffs
  • People Who Like to Cook
  • People Susceptible to Fad Diets, and
  • Gut Health Aficionados

For what it’s worth, here is just a sampling of some of the search terms I’ve come up with in my hunt for Tumblr amigos:

  • Keto fitness
  • Muscle-building recipes
  • Fitness geek (erm, not the results I expected…)
  • Kimchi
  • Asian fitness
  • Workout food
  • Yoga diet/Yoga for dudes/Yoga fitness/Yoga recipes
  • Qi gong
  • Tai chi
  • Wellness
  • Healthy snack
  • Nutrition
  • Korean food
  • Mindful eating
  • Clean eating
  • Mindfulness
  • Gut health

…and more!

Not that I’m convinced that the following is the most efficient method, but my basic strategy has been to just run down rabbit hole after another of a reblogged post. By that I mean I will find a post that I think is somewhat on-brand, and then check out who inevitably reblogged it (an original post is a rare find around here). Then I will move on to the blog that they got the post from, and so on and so forth, potentially finding the original source at some point–though that’s not really important in and of itself here.

With each stop along this chain, I’ll try to scroll through that blog’s posts until I find something worth sharing on mine, then Liking that post, Reblogging that post, and then–now that they’ve been deemed worthy–Following the blog as a whole.

On occasion I will add in my own two cents of commentary when manually6In contrast to the bulk of my posts, which are being handled by Queue+ reblogging a post. Interestingly, I’ve found myself really reblogging only 3 types of posts:

1. Artistic pictures of fruits/veggies. Not sure why, but I have definitely noticed that these types of pictures get an insane amount of responses (“Notes” in Tumblr-speak)…like 10k-100k range. Gotta give the people what they want, I guess…and what the want is food porn,7No relation to sexual pornography. apparently:

Figure 2. Strawberries. Nothing but ----- strawberries.

2. Pictures of meals that are in desperate need of a side of kimchi:

Figure 3. I award myself bonus points for the The More You Know reference.

3. And, for some reason, I think it’s humorous to pretend I have yoga ambitions (as indicated by adding the tag “#mangoals”):

Which, by the way, Assy McAsskins here leads me to another interesting point. People–mainly females–like to show off their booties in the fitness realm, so I actually have to actively work to minimize that type of content on my Tumblr. That’s not so much the image I’m aiming for.

However, once I get my ass in shape like that, I’m sure as shit going to be posting ironic recreations of such posts like you see above. I fancy myself humorous…but really I’m probably just bougie in that regard.

Journal Date: 18 January 2020 (Saturday)

Ass-bombing aside, I do need to figure out the magic formula for gaining users. Recall that 50 followers seems to be my main goal initially. I’m guessing that there’s some internal Tumblr algorithm that uses that as a threshold, and once over that it starts automatically recommending your blog to random passer-byes.

I took a few days to get the first few followers, but as of 13 January 2020 these were my Tumblr stats:

And by the time of this writing I was up to 17:

Also…that‘s my top post? Spinach butternut squash pasta? Whatevs, People of Tumblr, whatevs…

Okay, so back to trying to figure out how to reel in the critical Followers. Here’s what I was thinking (but yet another unproven theorem): who’s most likely to follow me? Probably someone just like me, newer to Tumblr and desperate for any Followers, and more than willing to engage in some good ol’ quid pro quo.8Don’t even act like you don’t know that means. Don’t even.

In other words, I should be preying on those thirstiest9I believe the youths use this as a synonym for someone desperately longing for something, such as dick. of us Tumblr citizens. At this point, I’ll spare you another litany of screenshots, so for those you who are actually reading this to inform their own Tumblr Takeovers, I hope your imaginations suffice.

The strategy: when I search for a particular term, instead of having the most popular posts pop up, I can select the most recent posts to appear. The key here is that it doesn’t do any good to follow an inactive blog–if the owner of the blog doesn’t pay it any attention any more, they won’t see that I’ve followed them and be inclined to follow me back. Plus, they would obviously be past the point of caring about how many Followers they have.

Ideally, I would Follow someone who would see it in relatively short order–within minutes to hours, preferably–and, in the heat of the moment say, “What the heck–you scratched my back, so I’ll go ahead and scratch yours” and Follow me out of the pursuit of our mutual benefit.

The second thing I would be looking for is posts with less than 20 Notes. In other words, not too many people have responded to that particular post yet. If I’m able to be one of the first people to appear to find value in another Tumblr’s post, that’s bound to earn me a lot more good will with them than, say, being the 23,119th person to Like that post. It’ll give me a chance to stand out enough to maybe get Followed by them.

Okay, so again, that’s my logic for going that route. I’ll need to get back to y’all about how effective that this actually turns out to be, or if I “sTumbl”10rim-shot upon a more efficient method.

One last important thing to note is that for the first few days of trying to gain followers, I would do it during what I would call official “work” time. This is time that I’ve been able to carve out and minimize the precious distractions, such as my darling daughters, and get the chance to focus on getting intense work done (this is typically after the girls have been put down for the night, in case you were wondering).

Each night it would eat up 30-45 minutes of valuable time in which I really needed to focus on other things, such as writing blog posts, arranging real estate transactions, or honing my web development skills.

Fortunately, I realized fairly quickly that using this work time for such games was going to make this whole endeavor a losing proposition. I would have to invest waaaay more time than would be worth it to get up to enough Followers to get this show on the road.

But I had a secondary Eureka moment: I can waste time with this Tumblr game that I’m already wasting elsewhere…namely when taking care of, er, bodily wastes. And riding the bus to/from my other day job. Sometime I need to do mindless stuff, and currently that stuff tends to be playing FreeCell on my phone. But of course, that is just time sucked into a black hole of No Return On Investment, so it makes sense to spend it doing something equally mindless, but at least moving my independent career forward, if possible.

So, yeaaaaaah…that’s where I am at right now with this project.

Though in a way, it’s sort of a dream job. Forget working from home–this Kimchi Kingpin is working from his throne.

After all, as our current president has so eloquently demonstrated, sometimes you only need a toilet and a smartphone to really change the world…

Content created on: 15/17/18 January 2020 (Wed/Fri/Sat).

Footnotes & References:[+]

Taking Over the Mean Streets of Tumblr

16 January 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of my pursuit of passive income via slanging kimchi on Tumblr. Now that I think about it, I guess I’m sort of an aspiring internet drug dealer–but the GOOD kind of drug dealer, like, say, an anesthesiologist. You can read about my descent into the light underbelly of the internet in Epitaph, The Prissy Pet Project, and Cuckoo for Kimchi Puffs, if need be. Or if you have insomnia and need to get some sleep…

As always, it’s good to at least lightly refresh my Dear Readers as to what this particular not-exactly-shooting-for-the-stars pursuit is about.

One of the Four Pillars of Pointellism1I’m appropriating this term from the art community for my own purposes. Get over it. is to provide resources for people who are interested in non-traditional money-producing ventures, but don’t necessarily want to risk wasting their time and/or reputation in the process.

That’s where I swoop in, to investigate less-than-sure-bets and then expound upon my misadventures at medium length. Then the readers can decide whether or not such schemes are a good fit for them. With any luck, I’ll make some money along the way myself. Or at least gain Life Experience Points…

Currently I have been following a random online guide to making money via Tumblr.2Tumblr, a rather popular micro-blogging site.

As a reminder here is the basic checklist of such schemes:3All screen shots should be assumed to be from https://www.onlinedimes.com/how-make-money-on-tumblr/

The short version of this strategy is this:

  1. Find some niche you like, and start a Tumblr blog related to that topic.
  2. Using some automated tools to post ad infinitum, build up a critical amount of Tumblr followers (50+). Don’t bother with original content–just repost from other like-minded blogs.
  3. Set up a basic Amazon store selling products related to your blog’s theme/brand.
  4. Use your automated posting tools to advertise your store on all your posts as they spread through Tumblr like a virus.
  5. Profit.4To be clear, the profit is via a small commission of 2-7% for everything you sell via Amazon–it’s not actually your products in the store.
  6. Repeat Step 5 without lifting a finger.

Last I left you, I had been in the process of trying to settle on a brand, and I had just abandoned the idea of a luxury pet brand, The Prissy Pet Project, in favor of an untitled kimchi/keto wellness brand.

This brings us to…

Journal Date: 29 November 2019 (Friday)…

You may be relieved and/or disappointed that I decided against incorporating Dear Leader Kim Jong Il into my brand image.

Nuclear War, Averted! (With North Korea, at least…)

The sad fact is, I’ve taken pretty much the most boring, uncreative route possible and gone with a rather utilitarian name, kimchiandketo. Sometimes things are best left un-overcomplicated…unlike this sentence. Anyways, it was available both on Tumblr and as a regular internet address, so I felt pretty good about the ability to at least have a consistent brand.

Within minutes of each other, I had staked my claim to both kimchiandketo.tumblr.com and www.kimchiandketo.com. Nice.

The former was free and the latter cost me about ~$20 for a year. However, I should note that was cheaper than usual because I could just piggyback off of this site, and not have to pay for website hosting.

Speaking of “$20,” I think this is a good time to broach the topic of exactly how profitable do I expect this to be? I guarantee you my Board of Director is going to be asking me that question.

Well, I finally got around to watching the video that Franklin, our esteemed guide, had included on the webpage that I’ve been referencing, and fortunately I was paying attention. He happened to mention almost in passing that he had made “like $20 in just 24 hours” shortly after his store was live online.

Now, this was a bit lower than I had anticipated, but there are 2 things that should be pointed out in regards to this: 1) if that actually holds steady, that’s roughly $600/month, which is not too bad given how little work I would be putting in on an ongiong basis, and 2) it seemed like he cited that figure only 2 days into trying to monetize his Tumblr following, so he might have actually hit a much higher steady-state amount.

If you’re wondering, it looks like his store specializes in selling tie-dye shirts with low-level humorous phrases on them to recreational drug users. Which, honestly, sounds like an easy sale, so I’m not exactly expecting to be making $600/month any time soon.

Also, some very relevant information I came across in one of the links5https://codecanyon.net/item/woozone-amazon-associates-bundle-pack/11240475 found in Franklin’s guide is Amazon’s commission rate for various products:

I really wish I would have done this research before even thinking about what I would want to sell in my store. Here’s why:

Assuming Dead-Head t-shirts fall under “Amazon Fashions (Men),” then Frankie-boy would be making a sweet 10% commission on his sales. As for my decision to go from luxury pet supplies to kimchi, it looks like my commission rate will go from 8% down to 5%. Dammit.

Oh well, I guess that’s the price you pay for trying to improve the gut health of all wealthy-ish mankind, right?

Anyways, I was going to get my online version of Kim’s Convenience setup while I had the momentum of ambition on my side…until I found out that both of the WordPress themes (super-helpful pre-made website templates) that Franklin was recommending were about $70 each. That’s a big enough of an investment that I decided to hold off on dropping 700 dimes on it until I knew I had the Tumblr audience to send over there. Also keep in mind that a key principle in my quest is to minimize bandwidth-draining decisions, making it not worth my time to find a free or at least cheaper alternative. So setting up the Amazon store is temporarily on hold for now.

But in the meantime I can get my Tumblr presence up and running. Yee-haw! Let’s get this rodeo on!

The auto-posting software that was used in the guide is called Queue+, and the free version allows one to add, en masse, 600 posts from other Tumblr blogs to be queued up and be automatically reposted by your account on a regular interval.

If this project proves to be something continuing for the longer term, I’ll probably drop the $20/year to be able to set up an unlimited number of posts across multiple Tumblr blogs. In that case I probably could spend 1-2 hours one afternoon to set up a year’s worth (or more) of blog posts, and not invest one red-blooded cent of my time on the project for another 365 (or more) days. That’s pushing 98%+ passivity!

During this proof-of-concept period, though, I’m stuck with queuing up 600 at a time. Given that I’ve set it to post every 10 minutes, that means it can run on auto-pilot for 4 days, 4 hours before needing to reload (though I would later change this to every 15 minutes, giving me 6 days, 6 hours of a break).

I found a handful of relevant and interesting blogs to populate my queue by searching such terms as “keto recipes” and “kimchi recipes.” I got up to 526/600 spots filled, so that it’s more than enough to get me up and running!

And though I haven’t got the store up and running yet, I decided to drop a link to it in all my posts (as prescribed by The Almighty Franklin):

Not exactly the proudest of my little tagline there, but I can always work on that later.

Welp, that seems like a hard day’s work, done and DONE!

*dusts off hands*

My Creation will take over Tumblr in no time! Nothing could possible go wrong in any asinine and boring way.

…or could it?

To Be Continued in Sunday’s post…

Content created on: 15/16 January 2020 (Wed/Thurs), and as noted.

Footnotes & References:[+]

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