busblog

first thing the xbi does when they get you is they snip that part out of yr brain

fortunately they also cut out the part that makes you feel pain

but your esteem is like those metal pasta bowls that you use to drain the water outta.

18-19 girls can kiss you up and down (which is normal for a chopper one pilot)

but an hour later you’ll feel empty and alone and worthless and purposeless.

which is why many xbi agents have a hard time taking a day off and find no comfort in sleep.

its tricky to resist the agency because very few employment paths can lead to being able to do all the things that xbi agents get pleasure from:

helping people
being creative
being part of a well organized team
fighting crime
travel
responsible drinking
being naughty at times
and being undercover

fortunately many of us are excellent fakers.

unfortunately the xbi doesnt like it when their agents try to move on to other lines of work.

so they will sabotage things like little gremlins, planting poison pills here and there

so we will have no other path other than to return to the agency.

the last few months have been tough on me because the xbi has done its best to hack my email,

steal my snail mail, and redirect the phone calls i have been receiving from prospective employers

i dont take it personally. it’s how they stay in business. and it usually works.

but i really dont wanna fly in a helicopter any more. i dont want to live in a lair.

i dont wanna be surrounded by beautiful women and riches and gunfire and mayhem.

i want to do simple things like change the world – but on my terms.

one of the best things i did to “blow my cover” of being an ex xbi agent was to get a license plate that said xbi on my car. didnt work. they smashed it a few times, had it towed, screwed up my insurance so i had to pay $$$$ in monthly insurance.

and now i sit in my basement watching game of thrones quietly working on a new novella, a followup of Stiff, about angels and demons in heaven, which is hard to do when you have no confidence which is why novels take me over a decade to write.

and then today a sweet little cherub texted me asking if i saw this sweet podcast where two guys id never met spend a long time heaping praise my way calling me a genius and an inspiration to how they started blogging.

when youre in the basement, unemployed, being effed with by numerous sources, it’s like a beam of sunlight coming in through a jail cell.

probs cuz i didnt think anyone even remembered this little blog still existed

or that i ever walked the earth.

so thanks Pete and Derek!!!

matt drudge has made so much money off headlines that link to stories that he buys houses with cash.

he bristles when you call him a blogger, and i think most bloggers do too

because most people dont think that just providing links and headlines is blogging.

whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it wrong today because currently he has a huge headline that says NOW COMES PLAGUE

with a picture of a creepy looking flying bug of some sort.

the headline is so odd that it sounds like Drudge himself may be in the throes of the plague

BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH HE HAS UNLIMITED SPACE ON HIS WEBSITE HE WILL NOT EXPLAIN ANY FURTHER

so you click the link and whoa, apparently billions of cicadas are fixin to party on the East Coast

They’ve even named it Brood II!

but in the second graph the reporter actually brings the science:

But as ominous as that sounds, the insects are harmless. They won’t hurt you or other animals. At worst, they might damage a few saplings or young shrubs. Mostly they will blanket certain pockets of the region, though lots of people won’t ever see them.

which makes you think, WTF matt drudge?

how does your weird OMG PLAGUE hed help people respect or trust you in the future?

and if the plan for the site is to exaggerate in science and nature as much as it does with politics

why would someone like LA Mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti want his ad on that page?

maybe i’m missing something.

ive never been stumped by a question before.

blogging should be like walking. you just do it. it gets you there.

how is your walking going?

after decades and decades of writing i would hope that the tunnel from the soul to the screen should be

clear and wide and greased up and smooth

if youre being honest with yourself and your readers and youre eating right,

blogging should be a simple as taking a healthy dump,

so that when you wipe your ass with your critics and haters

they don’t even notice

for there is no stain.

as fun as it is to relax in the sun of hollywood during a beautiful spring, it’s best to create - especially with others

imagine if LA was inhabited by a bunch of slackers who were all, lets just chill and enjoy the view

the boss would never would have wanted to see the tower records on sunset

and frances bean would have just wanted to stay in seattle and be cool.

sometimes i ask myself, how is it that howard stern isnt copied by more people, he is super successful, after all

and then i realize, many people are afraid to really go for it in life

even though they know that life is short and the unique things they have to offer could really help people

imagine if these three bad brothers just said you know we’ll just play music that is mellow and safe

with that said, sometimes i think people are a little too ambitious and should leave certain things alone

some things are just perfect the way they are

ok, it’s bedtime. bon nuit,

tony

is my kind of conversation.

because the world is beautiful this one was conducted by america’s sweetheart ken layne

guest starring a guy currently in his pajamas, robe, and white tube socks.

it seemed like xiaxue was popular from the start, but it’s never that simple.

she did achieve quite a few accomplishments, however, on her rise to the top.

the first was having beautiful design on the not-so-easy-to-tweak Blogspot platform

then once she became internet famous she was deluged with the backlash of haters. something that she’s had to deal with for almost exactly ten years now.

but one thing “wendy” has been able to do that has eluded millions: she has been able to make a living off her Blogger blog.

recently she delivered her first child, $25,000 of which was sponsored.

and it makes sense, she’s still enormously popular, despite/inspite of her lashing out at critics, she has tons of people who read her. she does youtube videos, commercials, and all the typical social media communique you’d expect.

she’s got over 125k subscribers on her YouTube channel, 150k twitter followers and over 200k followers on Instagram. the 28 year old from Singapore and will get tens of thousands of likes on her pics no matter if it’s a pic of her newborn, a snap of macarons, or one of many images of her pet bunny Igloo.

for the last year our girl has been remodeling her home, and even that has sponsors.

and of course a video

shes come quite a long way since she was nice enough to link to the busblog back in 2005.

married a nice american man, makes videos where she kisses FHM girls, and now has delivered a child with such ease it doesnt even seem real:

is there nothing she can’t do?

and in full makeup. ha!

anyways congrats!

and now it’s up on his lovely site, Citizen Reporter.

mark is a gentleman, he is worldly, polite, intelligent, and generous.

he also took one of my favorite pics of me ever on a cold night in amsterdam

what did we talk about the other day? who knows. blogging, my so called lyfe

love and the art of houseboat maintenance.

i listened to about 10 minutes of it today on my way to westwood but the sound of my own voice was too much.

hope you fare with it better than i was able to:

thanks Mark!!

this is almost deja vu from the last time i found myself inbetween jobs

people wanna drink with me, have lunch with me, do fun things with me

and all i wanna do is read and read and read and read

and play nba jam

and read reddit

and google things i aint never googled before.

today i read the credit reports of some famous people.

people delivering the news had no problem talking about these credit reports

but they would not link to them.

one of these days people will realize its ok to link to the things that theyre writing about.

even if where they are leading their audience is a dark and possibly illegal place.

truth is, all of this is virtual anyways, its just zeros and ones in someones computer.

this one just happens to be in russia

allegedly

he boosted my ego very nicely. for that i thank him.

one thing he said he liked about this blog is sometimes i would show you old school blog posts.

like this:

11 years ago today: party at my lawyers house, discussion of music, other bloggers, and praise from a canadian girl (the more things change…)

10 years ago today: NHL star Sergei Fedorov admitted that he and my girlfriend Anna Kournikova had been married but soon were divorced. of course this strained our relationship because once trust is gone, love has a very hard time rebounding.

9 years ago today: i had to put myself on blogger timeout

8 years ago today: How To Blog turns 100 days old, and beatrix garland hornberger turns two days old

7 years ago today: i participated in a weird ass meme that was lame but oh so 2006

6 years ago almost today: Shaq, LeBron, and Dwight Howard had a danceoff

5 years ago today: our friend Dan Grant announced he was running for congress in hopes to represent Austin Texas

4 years ago today: the Rocky Mountain News documented the end of their 150-year run… with this video

3 years ago today: Funny or Die had a very funny presidential reunion video

2 years ago today: The Week named my description of the controversial logo for the London 2012 Olympics the second best interpretation of all time

a year ago today: Ken Layne sells Wonkette for billions. for some reason it is an emotional moment so i really wrote about it in a serious mannah

But it doesn’t have to be

Your friends The Awl interviewed someone who used to be in print, then ran a Patch site near frisco, and now is back in print.

He says no one wanted to advertise on his Patch site

Sammy: I wish I knew why the local merchants weren’t interested. We’re not just talking SF Bay Area, we’re talking SILICON VALLEY here. This is the place where dry cleaners know all about the CEO of Apple or whatever. And they just didn’t want to partake—I think they tried it here and there, and found no traction (although honestly I don’t remember seeing a single local ad on my own site). It would appear that digital advertising lacks the oomph of print, for some reason. ‪

What blows me away is this weird inability ad sales people have with creating a demand for digital advertising and thus monetizing certain aspects of the web.

Advertising is, in it’s best case: useful info

Meanwhile the Internet is often where people find the most useful info.

Why is there such a disconnect for the two which should far more easily be able to connect the two via cookies on your digital screen than say TV?

TV of course being a medium that never seems to have any probs garnering ads even though its rarely targeted or personalized.

For example, I have AT&T uverse. TV, cable, phone everything. Yet on my tv I see those dumb ads of kids saying kids today have it made because they can move their TVs around their giant houses.

There’s nothing less interesting to me than those commercials. I cannot buy what they’re selling. I already have it.

Targeted web ads though shoukd know what’s in my abandoned shopping carts, they should know what I’m buying and selling on eBay. They should know my moms birthday. They should know where I’m mayor on Foursquare.

TV will never know that.

But my second screen knows all.

And I want it to know all.

Because when we are working together it becomes useful info.

Which always turns into $$$$.