March Madness Basketball Brackets Are Out
I’ve never been a sports guy. As a rule, I think sitting around watching sports on television is a big waste of time. I have a few exceptions to this rule though. They are: when the Cardinals, Rams or Blues make it to the playoffs, then I’ll start watching. I know, I’m a fair-weather fan, but I have a whole bunch of other shit I’d rather be doing than sitting around watching a losing team.
The other exceptions to my no sports rule is when the Olympics or March Madness are on. I love finding a sports bar that has 30 plus TV’s and they’re all on different games. There’s just something about seeing the non-stop action that makes me feel like I’m not wasting three hours of my life.
CNN said that close to 1.8 billion dollars are wasted in the workplace every year because of March Madness. Employees spend hours researching their picks for their brackets on who will make it to the Big Dance. Or they call in sick to watch the game. Or they write about it on their blogs. 😉
I usually pick the No. 1 and No. 2 teams and let it run from there. Duke is almost always my #1 choice and they are again this year.
But I guess for me, what makes it all tolerable is placing down your five bucks, picking your teams and sitting there watching the highlights for a couple of weeks and felling involved. Hearing of some no-name team like Siena or Morgan State knock out a big favoriate like Kansas usually elicts a, “Well there goes that one,” from someone around you. I love that, especially when it’s Kansas.
Will Duke win this year? Probably not. They’ll get knocked out at the Sweet 16 and piss me off like they have every year for the last five years straight, but I bet them anyway. Why? Because if I don’t, this will be the year they actually pull it off and then I’ll really be pissed.
So if you’re going to play, don’t play at work. But in case you need help picking your brackets, here’s a good link:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
Lucid Dreaming and Dream Recall
I’ve known I’ve had sleep apnea for 15 years or more, but I never did anything about it. So after going to the doctor because of a three day headache, he formally diagnosed the problem and I finally got a CPAP machine to help me sleep at night.
So now that I’m able to get into deep REM sleep, I am dreaming my ass off. Luckily for me I grew up in Hawaii so that’s were most of my dreams take place. But it’s weird to be dreaming in Hawaii, standing on a cliff over looking at Hanauma Bay and then having one my Supervisor’s walk up to me in shorts, a black Aloha shirt, flip-flops and sunglasses on his head. He then says, “Mighty fine weather we got here.” (Yeah, it was you Clawson—scary!)
I’ve only had the CPAP two days, but the first day I dreamt I was in Chinatown, on O’ahu, and a co-worker came walking around the corner. I remember being surprised to see him and I said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
He said, “Getting a tattoo.”
“No, I mean here? In Hawaii?” I said.
“What? I was in the Navy,” he said.
I’ve always been able to remember parts of my dreams. I’ve never been very good at controlling them though. Being able to able to remember your dreams is called Dream Recall, being able to control your dreams is called Lucid Dreaming. The first step to Lucid Dreaming is being able to recall what you dreamt about in the first place.
If you have never been able to remember your dreams, well now you can. The first step may seem like mumbo-jumbo, but keep an open-mind before dismissing it.
First, right before you go to bed, sit on the edge of the bed. Relax, breath. Ok, inhale deeply, count to three. Breath in 1,2,3, now slowly exhale breathing out–count to four,1,2,3,4. Then breath in again, count to three, now breath out count to four, do this five times.
After you’re relaxed say, “Tonight I will remember my dreams.” Deep breath in, 1,2,3, deep breath out 1,2,3,4. Repeat, “Tonight I will remember my dreams.” Repeat this 10 times. Don’t rush. I know you’re tired but the whole process is less than a minute. Forego your foreplay if need be, this is mental masturbation at its finest. Once you’re finished you can lie down and go to sleep. I think you’ll be surprised at what you will remember when you first wake up.
Some people like to keep a journal next to their bed, others like a tape recorder. I almost always remember my dreams. I repeat them mentally a couple of times when I first wake up. I can remember my dreams most of the morning, but by the afternoon they’re long gone and sometimes reappear at the oddest times. I could be at the grocery store and all of a sudden in my mind, there will be that supervisor standing there in his black Aloha shirt saying, “Mighty fine weather we got here.”
Lucid Dreaming is different than Dream Recall in that in Lucid Dreams, you’re in control of what happens in the dream. Lucid Dreamers don’t just fly in their dreams; they can do flips and race an eagle if they want to.
I was taught how to do Lucid Dreaming from a professor of mine, Dr. Sippos in my first year in college. The process is the same as dream recall, although you have to be able to be able to recall your dreams first or you won’t remember if you were in control of or not.
So again, right before you go to bed, sit on the edge of the bed. Relax, breath. Ok, deep inhale, count to three breathing in 1,2,3. Slowly exhale, breathing out count to four,1,2,3,4, then breath in again, count to three, now breath out count to four, do this five times.
After you’re relaxed then say, “Tonight I will be in control of my dreams.” Deep breath in, 1,2,3, deep breath out 1,2,3,4. Repeat, “Tonight I will be in control of my dreams.” Repeat this 10 times. Again don’t rush.
Now remember, you can do whatever you want in your dreams. If you want to have sex with the giant pink Energizer Bunny that’s beating his drum down the grocery store aisle, you can do that. You want to jump off The Arch into the Mississippi River? You can do that too. Nothing is off limits when you’re Lucid Dreaming.
I will say this though, if you decide to try Lucid Dreaming, you may feel tired the next day. When I used to Lucid Dream, I would be worn out the next morning. I mean, it was fun, don’t get me wrong. But after you’ve been a ninja, surfed Waimea and scored with ten girls in a row, you’d be tired too. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying it at least once.
Here’s a clip about Lucid Dreaming:
Obama Visits St. Charles, Missouri
When you see President Obama speak on television, you probably never think of all the logistics it takes to get him to that location, do you? I know because I never did until yesterday.
I work in St. Charles, Missouri; for an agency that will go unnamed. I get off work at 3:00 pm and I usually run right out the door. But yesterday I decided to stay and work out for 30 minutes, something that’s as rare as a total solar eclipse. So I didn’t leave work until about 3:45 pm.
I walked to my car, got in and took off down the road. Within two miles of my work, I hit a major wall of traffic. I kept seeing the traffic light turn green, but no one was moving. What the…? I thought.
I watched as cars started taking any side-streets they could. That’s when it hit me, Shit! Obama’s in town.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m an Obama guy and have been since I saw him speak at the National Democratic Convention five years ago. But I hate traffic at least as much as I like Obama, and I’m not happy with him at this point because I know he’s the one causing it.
So I cut up this little side road thinking, This leads me to the highway, not thinking that this secret on-ramp, really isn’t a secret to the Police, FBI and Secret Service, not to mention the hundred or so other locals that thought they had a secret way too.
So there I am, stuck in another Great Wall of China traffic line, when I look up at the on-ramp at Boone’s Lick Road and I-70. That’s when a dozen or so cop cars passed by, then about eight black suburban’s, and then the two black limousines with little American flags on the front. Bringing up the rear was another dozen or so police cars. The caboose was a black ambulance, which was weird because I had never seen a black ambulance.
As soon as they passed I thought, Cool, now they’ll open the on-ramps and we all can go. But nooooo! I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally I drove on the wrong side of the road for about 100 feet and made a U-Turn in a doctor’s office parking lot and went back down the way I came. But there was no luck there either—more traffic, so I went to a local sub-shop and ordered a sandwich.
After I ordered, I sat down. The speech had just started. I asked the bartender to turn up the television. He kind of gave me an attitude until I said, “Hey, if I’m going to be stuck here, I want to hear what the guy has to say.”
“Me too,” another guy said. I watched as the volume bar on the T.V. climbed higher and higher.
When my food came, I took a few bites and watched part of the speech. When I looked out the window, I realized that the traffic was gone. I stood up and looked toward the Interstate. Traffic was flowing. I slammed my sandwich down and got the hell out of dodge. I didn’t want to be stuck out in St. Charles for another three hours.
On the ride home cops were at every on-ramp. I kept thinking they were going to say, “You! Stop right there! We’re closing this show down, starting with you!” But once I crossed the bridge going East, I knew I was home free.
So just remember the next time the President makes a speech in some po-dunk town that you’ve never heard of, some poor fool was the first in line, stuck in traffic, watching the Presidents motorcade roll by.
But in case you want to see what it really looked like, here’s a clip:
Facebook Lurkers
I read an interesting article about “Facebook lurkers” today. In the article the author described two different definitions of “FB Lurkers.” The first being—people who wait on Facebook for their “friends” to appear so they can start chatting with them. These people wait in the virtual bushes and then pounce on their pray as soon as the chat bar, on the bottom right side of the screen, adds someone to their list. (Note: This is not the definition of lurker that I use.)
The definition of lurker that I use is the second definition. To me, a lurker is someone who never posts anything, but reads what everyone else posts, and then later comments about their friend’s posts, but not ever on-line. In other words, they never contribute to the FB community.
These people have the nerve to say things like, “Well so-and-so always writes about every little thing he’s doing,” or, “So-and-so is always so busy, they write on their wall two or three times a day.” But yet they never utter a word on-line.
What’s even creepier is when you see someone in real life who you forgot were even your friend on Facebook, and they say something like, “Hey, how did that sleep study go?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I read it on Facebook,” they say.
“Oh.” Lurker!
Real friends share what’s going on with their lives. That’s how you build a community and that’s how people become and stay friends.
I’ve been thinking about losing some of my FB lurkers. I think what I’m going to do is, if I haven’t heard, seen or read anything from certain “friends,” in a while, they’re getting dropped.
Harsh? Maybe. But if they’re not real friends, they won’t miss me anyway.
So lurkers, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” or possibly be gone forever.
My Million Dollar Ideas
My grandpa once told me, “Son, everyone’s got at least one million-dollar idea a day, but very few people act on them.”
Well my million dollar idea, since I’m a writer, is to start writing down my million dollar ideas and then at the end of a year, I’ll have a book.
Here’s my list for the day:
1. I’m going to start writing down my million dollar ideas.
2. Someone forwarded me a picture of an Asian lady at a Renaissance Fair in full chain mail and I thought, Hmmm, I wonder if they have Asian Renaissance Fair porn?
3. A self-defense store that caters to only to women. I would sell things like Pepper Spray, Stun Guns and Self-Defense videos and I would only advertise my store after certain television shows like: COPS, I Shouldn’t Be Alive or news reports where there was violence against women. That way, I play into the fear of my audience when they are ripe and ready to buy. Exploitative? Yeah, probably, but when you’re a millionaire you can sleep on a pile of money and I think that would help me sleep at night.
Speaking of not having a conscious, I’m not afraid of stealing ideas from other people. I was at lunch the other day with my wife when I overheard a guy say,
4. “There should be a seminar company called Seminars on the Sea. We could set up seminars on almost anything we want, in any industry we want, and the companies can write it off.”
I looked at my wife and whispered, “I’m stealing that idea.”
Of course she had no idea what I was talking about because A. She didn’t hear the guy and B. I hadn’t shared my Million Dollar Idea with her yet. I went home and looked it up; apparently there’s already a company called Seminars at Sea, and Seminars by the Sea, but not Seminars on the Sea. (Don’t even think about stealing my stolen idea.)
Feel free to throw your own Million Dollar Idea out there in the “comments” section. I mean if you’re not going to use it, why not share it?
But if you decide to be greedy and not to share your Million Dollar Idea, then please get out there and do something with it; don’t literally keep it to yourself. Who knows, you could have Billy May’s (R.I.P.) partner, Sulli Sullivan, pitching your idea on the next big infomercial.
“Hi, Sulli Sullivan here and ladies have I got the next big thing for you! Don’t you hate when you have embarrassing odor from nasty gas? Does your husband or significant other have to leave the room after you let one rip?
Well I’d like to introduce you to Fart-B-Gone! Fart-B-Gone is a stainless steel container that vacuums your unwanted flatulence away. You then put the lid on the container and release the stink-bomb outside to avoid any embarrassing odor. Call now and we’ll even throw in another Fart-B-Gone for free. But wait! There’s more…”
You can fill-in-the-blank on what the next big thing will be. And remember, these are ideas I’ve had in just one day. Please feel free to share.
Mo’Nique at the Oscars
Does anyone even care about the Oscars anymore? Sure, I know the actors and actress do, it helps validate their careers. I’m talking about normal, everyday Americans? Anyone?
I tried to watch the gliter-and-glitz but they played so many commercials that I just kept flipping back and forth from the Oscars to a repeat of Undercover Boss. I’m so over the pomp-and-circumstance.
I did catch one winner that was worth watching. It was of Mo’Nique and her win of Best Supporting Actress in the movie Precious. Here it is if you want to see it.
Self Defense for Women
Ladies, you’re at a bar when a guy approaches you and starts making friendly conversation. After fifteen or twenty minutes, his girlfriend shows up and he introduces you to her. The three of you have several drinks and the time melts away. Before you know it, they’re inviting you back to their place. What do you do?
Well if you’re into threesomes, you yell, “Shotgun!”
If you’re not, then the answer is obvious, you don’t leave with them.
I had a conversation with my haircut-lady today, because last night that scenario happened to her and she was shocked that, “They didn’t want to just hang out.”
When I asked her what she thought their intentions were, she said, “Honestly when I got to their apartment and went inside, I thought they were going to rob me. So I went and sat on the outside steps that lead to their apartment and called my friend in California and told him he needs to listen to this conversation. So then I put the phone in my bra and went back inside.”
“You thought they were going to rob you, so went outside to call your friend in California? Then you went back inside?” I said.
“Yeah, then this crazy girlfriend, who said she had been to prison when we were in the bar, started yelling at me about how I probably wanted to fuck her boyfriend. Then I heard my friend on the phone in my bra yelling, ‘Get out! Get out now!’ So I ran out the door and across the street and then I called 911,” she said.
“What did the cops say,” I said.
“The operator asked me where I was and I only knew I was on Manchester Road, so that’s what I told her and she kept saying, ‘Where on Manchester Road,’ and I didn’t know. So I hung up on her. Next thing I know she’s calling me back. I don’t even know how she got my number,” she said.
“Because you called them!” I said.
“I thought they couldn’t trace cell phones,” she said.
“They don’t know exactly where you’re calling from, but they have caller id,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah. I guess,” she said. Then she said, “Well somehow they got a hold of my cell phone account information because I’m on my mom’s account, so my mother called me and started yelling at me and asking me a bunch of questions. She said that the cops had called her and she wanted to know if I was alright. By that time the cops saw me walking down the road and stopped. Then they started yelling at me about being dumb-ass at the same time my mom was on the phone yelling at me for being dumb-ass. Then my mom had to come get me, I mean damn, I’m 32 years old and this is the second time this kind of stuff has happened to me.”
“The second time?” I said. “OK, let me just stop you there.”
Ladies, without getting into this any further, can we agree to learn something from my haircut lady? The best self-defense for women, besides not just being an idiot, is not to go home with strangers from a bar. If you do decide to go home with strangers from a bar, please understand upfront that this is for sex? Got it?
Now, if you already plan on having sex with a complete stranger, then there’s a chance you won’t get killed. But then again there’s also a chance you will get killed. I’ve had a few one-night-stands and for the record, I will say that I have never killed anyone. But I’m also a nice, pudgy guy and I was pretty happy to get whatever came my way.
So I’ll leave you with this, the best self-defense for a woman is not putting yourself in stupid situations in the first place. Listen to your intuition. If it tells you to leave, then leave. And whatever you do, don’t go outside, call someone in a totally different state and then go back inside. And if a situation happens like this to you, learn from it, especially the second time.
Search Engine Optimization for WordPress Bloggers
When I began blogging a few months ago, I had no idea what Search Engine Optimization was. I was happy just to be able to sign up for a blog with blogger.com, write an article and then publish something instantly. Once I figured out how to embed video into the site, I was ecstatic.
My site address was www.douglasthomaswallace.blogspot.com. After a couple of months, I was told that having a www yournamehere.blogspot.com address was like showing up to a black-tie affair in a Speedo. This same person said that serious bloggers used WordPress for their blogs; that way I could use the name I write under as my URL address. So I moved all my posts from my blogger.com account to a WordPress based site at www.douglasthomaswallace.com
I knew WordPress was free, open-source software, but I had no idea where to start. Did I use www.wordpress.com or www.wordpress.org? If I used WP.org, how did I go about downloading the software? How do I get my work onto the screen? How do I find the templates? How do I download them? Bottom line, I was lost.
I began calling around to find out how much it would cost me to get someone to do it for me. The first guy wanted to charge me $1500.00. I couldn’t hang the phone up fast enough. The next guy wanted to charge me $500.00 to set up my site, which I knew was free and told him that. He said, “Well it’s free if you know how to do it.” That statement pissed me off. Now I wanted to figure out how to do it on my own even more.
I began reading about WordPress.org I found a free e-book at www.johnnybtruant.com and followed his instructions. By the end of the day, I was able to get my own site up and going. Now after four months of writing fairly regularly, yesterday I learned that I still don’t know shit.
I wanted to learn about Search Engine Optimization so I emailed a local company called www.studioc5.com. Carlos walked me through all the things that were wrong with my site. He pointed out that my titles weren’t very search engine friendly. In fact, I didn’t even have titles in the URL; there were numbers instead.
“Google isn’t searching for www.douglasthomaswallace.comP=135 in the URL. They want titles up there,” Carlos said.
He also told me that I didn’t have my site set up to allow robots or followers to access my site. I didn’t have any tags. I didn’t have any headers. I didn’t have keyword rich phrases. I didn’t have very many links and worse for a blogger, I had never even looked at Twitter.
Of course I have heard of these all things that Carlos described, but I had no idea exactly what he was talking about. He was nice enough to explain that I needed to have a title that people might actually search for, that I needed to have those keywords in the body of the of the post at least twice, but preferably three times. He also said I need to optimize my site, showed me how to change the titles in the URL, and then explained what the categories and headers were. For now it’s all a learning experience and I’m glad I get to go through it with a very small audience right now.
So today I’m trying something a little different. I titled this article according to what I thought people might type in Google. I tried using keywords that are in the title at least twice. I added links. I put a header on the article and filed it in a couple of catergories. I followed Carlos’s directions and did my best to optimize the site. Now hopefully, in a week or so, my site will pop up when you Google it. We’ll see.
But just to help it along, I’m going to try this too: www.douglasthomaswallace.com is the most informative, gut-busting, rip-roaring good time you can have with your clothes on. If I told anyone else about www.douglasthomaswallace.com people would think I’m trying to preach the gospel of www.douglasthomaswallace.com and I’d hate to be accused of that.
There! That ought’a help those pesky little spiders. Thanks for bearing with me.
Memes the Idea Viruses
“A meme (pronounced meem) is a contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passing from mind to mind.” –Loren Coleman The Copy Cat Effect
Memetics is the field of study that uses a meme as the basic unit of cultural evolution. These memes include song lyrics, phrases and icons.
If I started chanting annoyingly, “Give me back that Filet O’ Fish, give me that fish!” Would you know what meme I was talking about?
How about, “Heeeeey Macarena!”? There’s a meme we all wish we could forget.
Don’t you hate when you get a song stuck in your head, but you don’t know why? If you’re married, it’s usually because your spouse was singing that song and you didn’t even realize it until an hour later. It doesn’t matter what the phrase or idea is, memes get implanted into the psyche and stay there for a long time.
Memes can also be ideas that are implanted subconsciously: yawning, fear, sadness, suicidal thoughts, fads, crowd aggression and even “going postal.” Once an idea grabs hold, it can have a major rippling effect.
The next time you start to sing a song, or you want a pair of name brand shoes, or you have a craving for a certain restaurant, ask yourself when, where and how was this meme implanted in my brain? And as you’re thinking that, remember this, for that brief moment in time, I rule your brain because I’m the one who implanted that meme. Now go and spread your own mental-STD that’s called a meme.
Oh Canada, How I Hate You So
The Olympics are finally over. The USA got Gold in Speed Skating, Four-Man Bobsled, Women’s Downhill and of course, Snowboarding. We won Silver and Bronze in various other sports too, bringing our total medal count to 37, a new Olympic record.
There were several heart-breakers of these games, but the biggest for me was yesterday’s USA vs. Canada Men’s Hockey game. It couldn’t have been better. Final game, US down 2-1, and with less than 30 seconds of the last period, the USA scored to tie. The game goes to overtime but ultimately Canada scored first. Game over. Crowd erupts into celebration.
So why the recap? Well in case you missed it, after the goal, the US team stood out on the ice in complete shock. They didn’t know what to do. I think it was the saddest Silver Medalists in the history of the Olympics.
On the other side of the coin, I think it was probably the loudest, happiest Gold Medal winners since the Miracle on Ice in 1980 when the USA team beat Russia for Gold in Lake Placid, NY.
So even though I hated Canada yesterday, to show that I’m not a bad sport, I’m going to let Canadians tell you why they are better than Americans. I think it’s funny that none of them mentioned because they say, “Eh,” every chance they get.