A very spiffy new version of this blog is only a few weeks a way and I need some help with a number of things:
1) Blog categories – As you can tell from the category list on the right, this blog is a mess. Half of those categories I created and never posted to again. So, the good folk at Rule29 who are designing the pending spiffiness are laying down the law. I only get five categories. Any thought on what they should be? I’ll toss out a few: Travel, Engaged Consumer, This Writer’s Life….?
2) What should I give away? Here’s what I’m thinking:
a. A rare Advanced Reader’s Copy of WAIW?
b. a WAIW? Shopping bag (my publisher is having these printed up)
c. a writing critique –…
American Apparel gave him the “Oh no you didn’t” finger wag and their lawyer Stuart Slotnick (what a great name for a lawyer, if I injured my back or was involved in a motorcycle accident, I’d call him!) countered with document requests and subpoenas digging into Allen’s personal life.
American Apparel lawyer Stuart Slotnick said the company plans to make Allen’s relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen married, the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal…
Sometimes I wonder if we are sheltered from really, really bad news or if there is just so much bad news that we can’t consume it all. And then I see the weekly Lindsay Lohan update (OMG! she spent the night at her ex’s) and I know it’s the former.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM…
It’s good to see that something is being done to help reunite kidnapped children with their parents.
A few passages of interest:
Correspondents say the children of migrant workers are usually targeted. They are traded for a few hundred dollars and few are ever found.
As if life for migrant workers isn’t tough enough.
And…
In a society that favours male heirs, it is often boys who are taken.
I understand the heir thing. Our children are our thoughts and ideals, our immortality. But kidnapping your heir? That can’t come with the gut-level sense of continuity. I’m not saying that heirs are less “heiry” when…
I exchanged a few emails with a reader that works at a costume shop. I asked her where most of the costumes are made. She told me that they have a lot of vintage costumes and make many of them themselves. Of course, the ready-made costumes mostly come from China. Part of her response:
It was fun during the election to tell people that we didn’t know when we would get Obama masks back in stock because they were working on them in China and they had yet to ship. Some people got really mad, but they just didn’t make them here, they didn’t even try. They were ONLY made in China.
You just gotta wonder what the workers think while they are producing and packaging Obama masks…
I had a speaking engagement today. It went awesome. I overheard several compliments:
“He’s like Matthew McConaghey, but not so flaky.”
“Best speaker we’ve had.”
In the words of @garyvee, “I crushed it.”
In other news…
One of these days I intend to getting around to writing about book bloggers and independent reviewers. Unfortunately, today isn’t that day. Until then, here is one of the most in depth reviews of WAIW? that I’ve seen….
Online or in print, WorldHum has some of the best travel writing around. Of course, I am little biased. They highlight my piece Adventure Dad as one of their eight favorite family travel stories….
It’s nice when people with skills support your work. I can’t wait to see the finished product.
Today I’m at Rule29 for a photo/video shoot. It should be fun, but I just learned that there might be makeup involved. I grew a big zit for the occasion. I hope it smiles….
