My Useless College Education

I was just thinking I should write a post on college, since my brother is graduating from his. And then, in my spam filter, I caught this little gem, which for reasons unknown to me, was under the heading “Business College.”

Hustler is a new realistic dong that will definitely be useful in your next passionate play.

I do not see why you would have to go to business college to determine that, but there you have it.

Which brings me to my topic for today. College. Why do we go, and what good is it?

One of my biggest regrets in life is going to college. I can say this not because I had a bad time in college, but because, given the choice to either go to college or check out what’s behind door number two in my history, I’d be excited to try door number two. That’s rare. Usually I’m kind of hippie-esque on this one (California roots, people. I believe in the power of organic vegetables and homeopathy and good vibes. Also, Asian fusion). For the most part, even if a particular choice was rough, I learned enough from it that I wouldn’t undo it.

There’s a saying I’m told is Romani, to the effect that you should never retrace your steps unless you’re willing to undo that portion of your life. This freaked me out to the extent that I have only ever taken highway 80 cross-country going one direction. And I go cross-country a lot. To the detriment of my car and my sanity and my bank account. I like driving. I like the open road. And I have become very well acquainted with the southern alternate route to 80. If you speed, it’s just as fast.

Unless you speed on 80 too. Then it’s a little slower. But prettier.

All of that is to say that given the choice to unwalk that path, to do something else with the three years I was in college (I finished, I finished, I’m just bright), I would take that chance. I would pick the red pill.

College Was Kind of Useless for My Profession

Everything I needed to know to be a writer I already knew by eighth grade. This is true, and it saddens me that most eighth graders do not graduate middle school with that capacity. I had excellent grammar and spelling skills and I read enough to know the difference between awkward and smooth phrasing. I started rewriting white papers for my mother when I was fifteen.

If I had been smarter, I would have started my business while I was still in high school. I could have been home free by now. I could have been keeping this blog for seven, eight years, people. You could have had SO much more Roguish in your diet.

I didn’t. I went to college. And I studied a lot of literature and philosophy and Shakespeare, spent an enjoyable three months in Rome on a study abroad venture, and weaseled my way through environmental science and French and Italian. It was fun. I like learning. I like academia.

It was completely and utterly useless to my profession.

I have never been asked for any of the skills I developed in college. I took precisely one class that offered the basics of business writing, and it was excellent, but I’m certain I would have learned more or less the same thing on the job if I had chosen instead to go be a stringer at an alt-weekly or write copy freelance as I do now. No one has ever asked me if Poe was being ironic when he claimed that he used only the forces of logic and reason, not intuition or experimentation, when he chose the rhyme scheme, meter, subjects, and scansion of ‘The Raven’ (Answer: he damn well better have been being ironic, because otherwise he was a tool).

People say you go to college for the experience. I say, that was a damned expensive experience. It cost me something like a hundred grand to go to the University of Chicago for three years, and that was with a sizable academic grant. I met people. I learned things. It’s a phenomenal school full of very smart people, and if I were planning on studying the origins or new virtues of something for the rest of my life, archaeology or economics or literature, I’d have gone again. I’d have taken the blue pill.

But I’m a writer. Writers write. I didn’t write more because I went to college, I wrote less, since I was working to support myself through it and trying to study for exams and come up with new interpretations of Much Ado. Writers write, that simply, and being in debt never made it any easier on us.

What say the rest of you? College or real-life experience? Red or blue pill?

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16 Strange Things About Tei

I got tagged by a meme. This is my first meme ever, and I can’t say I’m entirely thrilled about it, because I don’t like to waste all my random at once, but here goes. Thanks to Brett and Matt for making this one a double-header.

1. I have a deep and abiding love for my car. In a scary way.

My car is a ‘94 Honda Civic named Billy Markham, and he is my faithful companion and true. We have borne some fifty thousand miles in each other’s company over the last two years, and we have met many strange people and seen many amazing things, the oceans that bound this country and the mountains that raise it. The exploits of the ubiquitous Billy Markham are many, and some few worth recounting. He once pulled an eight-by-four trailer with a mattress strapped atop it through the Rocky Mountains, the Nevada desert, and the Sierras, expiring many a time in the heat only to rise again to battle his mistress homeward. He once brought me through a snowstorm all night long with a busted coil that could have exploded at any time. He delivered me, safe and unexploded, before quietly expiring in the night, never crying out of his ills, never letting me know of the torments he had suffered that night on my behalf. The mechanic who saw him the next day was in awe. “Truly,” quoth he, “this steed must bear you the greatest of loves, for I have never seen another sustain such a wound and continue onward. Had he been a lesser beast, you would have died out there, in the snows of Montana.”

Seriously. It’s a little sick. But I love him, and I will not let him die, not yet, not while I have breath to work on him and money to repair what I cannot. Also, he’s about to become a Colorado citizen, as of June.

2. I can’t whistle.

I really can’t. Good men have tried and failed to teach me. I blame it on my dental work.

3. I am a Champion.

No, for real. When I was sixteen, I became a swordfighter. I was good at it. The friend who taught me to fight and I had long talks about nobility and goodness and chivalry and what it all meant, and six weeks later he came back from Colorado, where he’d been studying blacksmithing, with a sword he forged me. He asked me if I would be his Champion, to guard over him and his children, for the rest of our days, and I accepted.

Come on. It’s not like I could tell him, “Sorry, dude, I’m not into this Champion stuff. Can’t I just be your homefry? We’ll get pizza. It’ll be just as good.”

It became a big part of my life, and if you’re one of my closest friends, you’ve seen it in action. Call it a hero complex. One of my kith and kindred needs me, I’m on the next flight out to be by their side and solve all the troubles. It’s a good credo. Never could think of better.

4. Karaoke. I’m great at it.

Once I was doing Salt-N-Pepa’s Shoop and the machine got behind on the tempo, so that the words on the screen weren’t synced with the music. They were, in fact, not the right words for that section at all. I got through the whole thing. Perfectly. I was AWESOME. I can also do Tupac’s California Love up right.

Don’t even talk to me about Eminem. I don’t want to hear it.

5. My hands and feet are seriously tiny.

I’m 5′8” and I weigh in at about a buck-forty, and my feet are a size six and a half. My hands are the palmist equivalent. Certain friends of mine have been known to stare at my toes. Not in the cute baby way, like, “Aw, wook at da widdle toes.” In the: “Dude. Your pinkie toe is disappearing into your foot and it’s scaring me,” way.

6. I’ve never done drugs.

No. Not even that one. Not even the demon weed. I don’t have any particular reason why. Never had a good reason to. I expect that some day I will find myself in Amsterdam with Snoop Dogg, and then I will have a damned good reason, but for some reason, ‘because we’re all getting high in the basement’ was never good enough for me. As it stands, though, my parents are more experimental drug-wise than me.

Yes, I’m aware that alcohol is technically a drug, but until the FDA classes it as such, no, I haven’t done drugs. I am a bad Californian.

7. I need my feet on the ground.

I can’t bicycle, roller skate, roller blade, ice skate, skateboard, unicycle, stilt-walk, or do any other activity that involves my feet only slightly elevated from the ground and balanced upon some object whose integral structure I cannot feel. Cars are fine. I’m actually a great driver, and I enjoy it. The jury’s out on motorcycles. I’m a little afraid to try. This is because the last time I was on a bicycle, I knocked out my two front teeth. And a motorcycle is kind of like a bicycle with an engine and a higher top-speed. It seems like I could potentially do a lot of self-damage on one of those.

I really want to try, though.

8. You can see 3-D images in my handwriting.

This is something a buddy of mine claimed back in high school. It is tiny. It is pretty. And it is damned near illegible. Here is my best attempt at a photo of it.

Cross your eyes and move your face away from the page slowly. If you do it right, you’ll see an elephant.

9. I used to play football.

Also soccer, basketball, and volleyball, but football’s the one everyone gets kind of weirded out by. No, I wasn’t a kicker. I was a running back. It didn’t last much past puberty. All the boys went and got huge, and there started to be a physics problem. If a body of mass x encounters a body of mass y at the same velocity, does the body of mass y get slaughtered? I do believe it does.

10. I’m a homophonophobic.

I just made that word up, but it’s true. Homophones: words that sound like other words. Your-you’re. They’re-there-their. If you screw these up, I will hurt you. It is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me. I do not understand what the problem is. WHY is this so difficult? Do you write PHONETICALLY? Do you still SOUND OUT YOUR SYLLABLES AS YOU TYPE THEM? Then WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS MISTAKE?

I understand a typo. A typo is fine. I do those too. Hit the wrong key. It happens. But this is not a typo. This is a word that MEANS SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER.

It especially troubles me when professional writers do this. I am not naming names, because that is mean, but I recently saw a professional copywriter do a blog post whose TITLE had a homophonic error in it, and then someone else RE-posted it, HOMOPHONIC ERROR INTACT. And I wanted to kill EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. And use CAPITALS GRATUITOUSLY. Which I realize is probably someone else’s pet peeve, excessive capitals. That’s okay. We all have our little things, and this is mine.

‘Cause, you know. MY LIST.

11. I’m superstitious.

I like magic. I like signs and portents and fortune-telling, and I’m a sucker for the real stuff. I’m not going to believe every charlatan on a street corner, but there was this one card-reader in Manhattan who totally got me because she was precise about things and she looked like a walking mummy with these big eerie eyes. She said I would have ‘at least two children’ and she wouldn’t talk about my health or my friend’s, which freaked us both out a bit. We were a little convinced that we were going to walk outside and a piano would drop on us.

We didn’t really. But there’s a strange little midland between believing in something completely and having it work its way into your brain, and I live in that midland.

I leave milk out for the fairies. I throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it. I fork my fingers at evil people. I don’t follow any particular faith on this one, pretty much any-and-all. If you tell me some African tribe back in the early A.D. period used to spin in a circle and belch to dispel evil spirits, I’ll probably add it to my repertoire. Be careful with this one. I already have a bunch of strange little ways.

12. I mimic dialects.

Not on purpose, it just happens. When I lived in Oakland, I spoke Ebonics, well enough that my boyfriend at the time had a friend who got on the phone with me and said, “I thought your girl was white?” When I went to England, I had an English accent, which was difficult because I would usually start, say, asking someone for directions, realize that I had asked in an English accent and now I had to keep it up, lest they think I was mocking them.

It works in other languages, but to a lesser degree, since my vocabulary isn’t fantastic. When I was in France speaking French, they assumed I was Italian because my accent was good but my grammar was mediocre. Same thing, reversed, for Italy. The accent was good enough that they thought I was just over the border, but the words weren’t fooling anyone.

One exception: Scots accent. Can’t maintain it. I think it’s because I’ve only ever heard men talking in a Scots accent. If I mimic them, I pitch my voice lower, as though the male baritone were part and parcel of the accent. I’m still trying to figure out which portion of my brain to blame on this one.

13. I can recite poetry.

Lots of it. I used to memorize for fun on long car trips. Still do, actually. Good way to freak out someone who’s arguing badly. Just start quoting appropriate Wordsworth at them. Clams ‘em right up.

14. If I’m with a good female friend and some guy tries to hit on us, we will unabashedly pretend to be lesbians.

Not in the hot lesbian lover way. We’ll basically act a little embarrassed, as though we’re sorry he got the wrong idea. “Oh. Um, this is awkward, but you see, we’re together. Yeah, together together. We’ve actually been married in a civil ceremony and we’re about to adopt. She’s planning on taking some time off of work to take care of the baby since I really can’t be away from my job right now, and - I’m sorry. Are we boring you?”

It’s good fun. Making up professions is good too, especially if you can throw in some age-old couple banter.

“Yes, she’s a photographer and I’m a lawyer, just made partner actually.”

“She’s the smart one in the relationship.”

“Oh, honey, stop that. That’s just not true - she’s brilliant, really she is.”

Kills the mojo dead. It’s amazing.

15. I am a speedy touch-typist.

85 words per minute, easy, and I can do it without looking at the keyboard. Good party trick.

16. I am Catwoman.

No, not really, but cats really like me. If I live with them, they’re totally indifferent, but I cannot tell you how many times I have been wandering down the street and cats have begun following me. They also invade my house - I’ll open the door and a cat I do not know will slink in and start looking around, as though searching for my secret drug stash. Then they’ll sit back and look at me expectantly. I keep feeling like someone told the cats that I’m the incoming prophet, and they got the wrong girl.

There you go. A plethora of randomness. To bed with me, because, bonus fact: I get tetchy if I’m in the same place for too long. I like having a home to come home to, but I am riding the wind much of the time. If I can ever get the writing together enough to become a travel writer for National Geographic, you’ll never see me again.

I know you’re supposed to tag people on a meme, but unless someone dinks my superstitious side and tells me that all the babies born today will die horrible deaths by a vengeful god unless I pass it on, I think I’ll let it die with me. If for no other reason than I don’t know eight bloggers who haven’t already been tagged. Tell you what, give me your favorite awesome blog in the comments and I’ll go expand my Pool of Awesome.

Subscribe. More random every day.

Little Known Definition of Niebu

Niebu (n) - a state of being in which one is suspended many thousands of miles above the planet’s surface while en route from one location to another.

Happy Niebu Day. Rogue calling this one in. See you tomorrow.

Serious Journalism Terms. Plus Sex.

The Deep Friar, the other day, asked in all seriousness, after we’d been joking about it all day, what a nut graf was. This after I explicitly told everyone we were not going to be discussing actual business-related subjects. He’s rebellious, is the Friar. To punish him, I am going to answer this question rogue-style. Come along, denizens of the Lusty Weevil. Step right this way. We’re going to make that Friar sorry.

Now then, the basic components of a journalism article are as follows: hed, dek, lede, nut graf, body, and kicker. And if you can resist thinking dirty thoughts about that series, you are a more self-controlled person than I (and Saturday’s dirty joke contestants).

First thing to know: Journalists enjoy screwing with layfolk.

All of those terms are misspelled intentionally. Anyone in an editorial office will claim this is so those words don’t get mixed up with the actual copy of an article and accidentally printed, but this is a lie worthy of getting booted into a deeper circle of hell. One with those people who scratch themselves in inappropriate ways when they’re in rush-hour traffic on the way to work. Like no one can see them behind their protective pane of opaque glass. Oh, we can see you. And so can the Gods of Judgment, and they are judging you as harshly as we are. We can only wrinkle our noses and mutter under our breath, but the Gods of Judgment can SMITE you.

Right. Where was I? The real reason for misspelling the terms is kept a secret from all other occupations (carpenters, pool drainers, CEOs of major corporations, et cetera). I cannot divulge the secret, lest the Ninja Journalists of Hibachi come after me in my sleep, but I am permitted to tell you the following: it involves an elaborate drinking game, an avocado, and (peripherally) Indiana Jones. More I dare not say.

Worth remembering: the only time journalists, English majors, copywriters, copyeditors, regular editors, or anal-retentive people will let you get away with misspelling is when WE have initiated the misspelling. This intention must also have a nefarious purpose behind it, and will probably be to the exclusion of all others. This is because everyone thought it was a cop-out major in college. Who’s laughing now? The Masters of Spelling, that’s who.

Anyway. They’re misspelled. Roll with it.

Hed.

Hee hee hee. Sorry. Okay. ‘Hed’ is short (and misspelled) for ‘headline.’ This one is fairly obvious. Let’s give our article the headline “Optimus Prime.” Because we can.

Dek

The dek is short and misspelled (which we shall hereby refer to as ‘S&M’ for brevity and humor purposes) for declaration. This is a sentence or two just below the headline that summarizes what’s in the piece. It’s not part of the article, it just sort of hangs with the lede like an extraneous buddy. The dek is basically the journalistic equivalent of the ugly friend. A lot of articles do without one for this reason. Ours is “Scientists determine the best sexual position.” See why we didn’t really want it? Feel free to excise it mentally from our article.

Lede

S&M for ‘lead-in’, the lede is the grabber sentence. This is the sentence whose job it is to prevent you from putting down your paper and picking up your crying child instead. It is supposed to be either shocking, informative, fascinating, or sexy. We’re going with sexy, since we’re already there. “Doggie style.”

That’s actually a fragment, which is not uncommon for ledes. My lede would actually be a list, in fragment form, and it would go like this. “Doggie style. Missionary. Cowgirl. You won’t need ‘em anymore.”

See? Aren’t you intrigued?

Nut graf

The nut graf is S&M for, get this, ‘nut paragraph.’ It basically means the paragraph that’s going to give you an overall sum-up of what’s to follow. The main nugget. The nut. This is more of journalists screwing with you. Pay it no mind. In my experience, frequently the nut graf is where one of two things happens: either you get really psyched about what you’re about to learn, or you find out that you were suckered by the lede and this article isn’t about what you thought it was about. Since our theme for the day is ‘journalists are messing with you’, we’re going to have our nut graf do the latter.

“A team of scientists, attempting to ascertain the best sexual position for those choosing abstinence, determined early this week that the optimal position was sitting in a separate room from one’s partner and conducting a phone conversation. This position has benefits that no other sexual position has, including lack of all sensation, a feeling of numbness and bewilderment, and occasional bouts of anger at one’s parents and former lovers.”

Body

The body is where all the real information is. In our article, we’d talk about the experiments the scientists conducted, quote them, quote their study group if we could get ahold of them, and generally kill you with information. This is the part of an article where most people tune out. Proven fact: if the article is not personally relevant to you and your life, you will not continue reading past the first paragraph. You’ll skim the main body until you get to the kicker.

Kicker

The kicker is the closing sentence or sentences that make you feel glad about leaving, so here we go.

“Just kidding. Go get laid.”

That’ll teach the Friar to ask relevant questions.

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The Rogue Mother’s Day

It’s like the Queen Mother. But different.

It’s Mother’s Day, people. Mother’s Day is at the top of my list of holidays-that-got-shanghaied-by-commercialism. Right up there with Valentine’s Day and Christmas. Now, one of my favorite things in life (and this is true) is to redeem holidays that have gone native and spend them doing activities in the actual spirit of the day (on Valentine’s Day, I write love letters. Real ones. With pen and ink and nice paper and perfume dottings and all. Take THAT, Hallmark). Mother’s Day I haven’t figured out yet, and here’s why.

My mom really likes Mother’s Day.

And I get that. What’s not to love about a day that celebrates the extraordinary pain involved in bearing and raising a child? (Seriously. I did NOT make that second part easy.) It started off so well, too. Mother’s Day had some great origins. Historically, lots of countries have a day to celebrate motherhood, and moms get gifts and appreciation on that day. It’s been going on since Greek and Roman times (for those of you who aren’t reading the comments, and seriously, you’re missing out, yes, those are the same Greeks and Romans who admired the aesthetics of a small penis). In this country, it was adapted originally to be a peace day, “Mother’s Day for Peace.” Later, as a movement to get better sanitary conditions during the Civil War.

Seriously. How cool is that? Mothers stood up to ask for peace and for safety. They wanted their day to symbolize those things that are associated most with hearth and home. Before anyone gets all uppity on me about the fact that women can be the breadwinners too, I remind you that I am single, female, and an entrepreneur, and that I wield mighty double-handed swords. I still think it’s awesome that instead of saying, “We deserve a day to be pampered and loved for being mothers,” they said, “We want our day to symbolize motherhood, and so we will use it to stand up for peace and safety, because that is what motherhood is about, bitches.”

They probably didn’t say that last bit, this was the Civil War. They were thinking it, though.

I’m two days away from going home to see my own mother, which is when she’s going to be showered with the gifts and all. Until then, I’m going to call her up and we’re going to have a long, long talk, because in twenty-four years of being my mother’s daughter, I have discovered that the thing she likes most is talking with me. Not most in the ENTIRE WORLD (I’ve got a brother and a sister she’s pretty fond of talking to as well, and I’ve seen her get positively squidgy over new cellphone technology), but most from me.

I’m also going to blog about it, because she gets kind of tickled about the blog thing, too.

Maman

You’re amazing, and I love you. In honor of the Greeks and the Romans and the Chinese and the Brits (back when they were English) and really awesome colonial mothers, Happy Mother’s Day.

If I am happier than I have ever been in my life right now (and I am), it is because of you.

If I am smarter than the average box of biscuits (and I like to think so), it is because of you.

If I am an incredibly speedy typist and that fact helped me become a better writer, because I could get what I was thinking onto the page as I was thinking it (which is true in ways I never dreamed when I was trying to beat the hell out of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing), it is because I saw you working on a computer back when computers were not common, in your basement office, and you were tapping away like mad, and I thought “That is so cool. I want to do that.”

If I am an incredible wiseass on this blog and you worry about it sometimes (which I know you do), you should blame Daddy. It’s all his fault.

I love you.

Subscribe already. You’re my Mom, you’re supposed to.

And the Winner Is . . . Dirtiness.

Rogues, scoundrels, fiends, vagabonds, renegades, rebels, down-at-heel heroes, kitchen lads and lasses, and, of course, artists . . . .

I give you the submissions for the Bad Journalism Pun Joke Awards.

The insanely awesome prize for winning this contest is a drink of the winner’s choosing, bought by the owner of the Lusty Weevil (that would be your Rogue truly), cash. Well, not cash. PayPal. Because this is a virtual pub, people. You gotta roll with it. The virtual component of the prize means that the drink retains the magical ability to change form AFTER IT HAS BEEN ORDERED AND BOUGHT. It is a web-based goblet of liquid that transmogrifies upon the winner asserting his or her will. Yes, I just got all geeky on ten dollars sent via PayPal. Pay no attention to the rogue behind the curtain.

Without further ado, I give you: Bad Journalism Pun Jokes.

Our First Contestant: Kelly of Maximum Customer Experience

Kelly wins points for not only being the first person to make a joke, but by sending me a link to Cover Letters From Hell, giving a nod to Pheonix Way, and referencing both lederhosen and a cloak of invisibility. She also entered this contest twice, giving her two shots at the title. Starting off strong. Kelly’s two entries are:

“Okay, so the other day I walk past a solid-body on Pheonix Way, getting a nice kicker out of scratching his nut graf right through his lederhosen…”

“There’s a reason for the cloak of invisibility. Maybe they’re each afraid their nut graf isn’t quite the kicker it’s supposed to be.”

Our Second Contestant: Janice Cartier of Painting a Day

Janice gets points for picking up on the storytelling vibe not once, but twice, and contributing to the ongoing tale of our beloved Lusty Weevil. She also used all four of the given words, and gets extra credit for her creative use of the word ‘lede’. (Note: the Rogue does not advocate Coors, lede or otherwise.) She also entered twice (sort of) by getting into the swing and using ‘nut graf’ as an expletive, which tickled the Rogue, and incorporated the phrase ’shaking the salmon’. Janice’s entries are as follows:

“Harrison enters the pub…’Walk this way, walk this way”…. a swagger in his kicker, he tosses a fresh tie die to Brett, some jeans. “Ladies getting rowdy again?” Brett, grabs the tee out of the air, puts on the pants. “Nothing I can’t handle, bro”. One solid body follows the other over to the bar as every female eye in the place follows. “Two Coors lede, barkeep.” The Viking hands one to his friend. They turn and look around, survey all Tei’s friends, ” Ahhhh, nut graf, just the way we like’ em.” “Could get kind of messy”….”Ahhh, we’ll mop it up.”

“Allison, seriously, hold the blade right there. And quit shaking the salmon, Every nut graf in the universe will be calling you up.”

Our Third Contestant: Wendi Kelly of Life’s Little Inspirations.

Wendi gets points for using the word naked many times over, for mentioning viking hats and bravely making the first undeniably sexual visual of the night. Bonus for referencing bestiality. Go, Wendi. We didn’t know you had it in you.

“OMG! Now Brett is naked, naked naked.

oh wait…now he has a viking hat hanging from his lede on his solid body.

Um..Brett watch out for those horns, there is a mis-behaved dog jostling things around in here. You don’t want to get a kicker in your nut graf.”

Our Third Contestant: Rebecca Smith of Smithwriting

Rebecca gets points for using all four of the words in a single trail of thought, as well as using the word ‘nut graf’ as what sounds like a painful medical problem. Also, for being the only person to go for the obvious pun on ‘lede’. Her entry also references collegiate sex, of which I have fond memories. Her entry:

Rebecca Smith: “I dated this guy in college who had a real solid body, but here’s the kicker: He had a nut graf. Funny, he still ledes the pack of my ex-boyfriends …”

Our Fourth Contestant: Matt Tuley of This Laptop for Hire

Matt gets points for defending his own nut graf. However, he has unfortunately disqualified himself by tagging me in a meme for which Brett had already tagged me, leaving me to come up with sixteen MORE random facts about myself that I have not already referenced at the Lusty Weevil. And since this pub is a ball of random, that takes some doing. Extra work for Tei = no soup for Matt. Here’s his entry anyway:

Matt Tuley: “I knew a guy once had to get a nut graf. Was out of commission for a week. There, but for the grace of God…”

Our Fifth Contestant: Karen JL of Storyboard Blog

Karen started off crazy strong, by referencing a comment I made, talking about booze, giving all the journalism words creative alcohol-related references and inventing what sounds like the best Writer’s Brew ever. Unfortunately, Karen went and shot herself in the foot by claiming Aquarians rock more than Sagittarians. With totally unjust prejudice from the judges, she too is disqualified. Here’s her recipe for Writer’s Brew though:

“Yes, fresh booze all day long. BUT when you get here early, you get to give the keg a good little kicker, which gives the lede a solid body and you get lots of head on your nut graf. Mmmm…”

AND THE WINNER IS:

Brett Legree, in a surprise Pingback entry.

Brett wins for the following reasons:

He took the lede by dragging the game on over to his own blog, where he referenced his very own nut graf, a bold move no other contestant took. The kicker? He offered up a solid body with nut graf on full view. In a shocking turn of events, the pornographic entry wins the favor of the judges. Brett, send me your PayPal address. I’m buying you a beer.

And a tablecloth. That peanut bowl is see-through. It’s like covering yourself up with a giant magnifying glass.

Unless that was the point.

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I Am Not Useful. (And Why You Should Be Cool With That)

Yesterday, I explained why Rogue Ink is a pub, and not a business blog. I explained that clients are welcome in the pub, so long as they can handle my foul-mouthed patrons. Today, I’m going to explain why you guys, my readers, want to hang out in my pub despite my lack of business-blogness (other than the pro-cursing policy, and Brett shouting ‘Naked!’ a lot in my comments). I shall begin with the following:

I loves me the link love.

The pub is packed tonight. Harrison’s sitting at a table with me, teaching me how to read tarot and discussing why Hondas and the Sagittariuses who ride them are just better. Kelly Erickson’s putting quarters in the jukebox and Tony Lawrence is showing her how override the fifteenth round of ‘Piano Man’ that I put in there. Carrie Lowery’s smoking what appears to be a meerschaum and Janice Cartier’s trying to get Allison to hold still for her painting ‘Nude with Sushi.’ Karen Swim just got ahold of Steph Vandermeulen and is guiding her into the Realm of Endless Cheerful Sunshine in which Karen lives (seriously, follow the woman on Twitter. She is an amazingly cheery person. In the mornings, no less). Amy is telling the Deep Friar that I’m her long-lost twin, and the good friar is smiling and nodding, which is wise when you’re talking to Amy, and James is knitting Brett a new kilt because his got shredded in a swordfight with me. There’s a whole lotta random going on.

Nobody is here at the pub looking for practical advice about running a copywriting business. And here’s why.

When I Am Useful, It Is Entirely By Accident

Writing clean, concise, well-organized copy is what I do all day for a living. I don’t want to do it when I’m off-duty. I will tell you right now that I never sit down to write a post with a clear take-away point in mind. You know that weird spinny, vaguely nauseous feeling you get when you’re done reading one of my posts? (Don’t lie. I know you do.) That’s what it feels like in my head ALL THE TIME. By the time I wind up at the end of one of these posts and it sums up nicely, I am as surprised as anyone.

In my business, I write with a beginning, middle, and end. I have an article due tomorrow for the SF Chronicle, and it’s going to have all its article-pieces in place. It will have a lede, and a nut graf, a solid body, and probably a good little kicker in the final paragraph. And yes, I know what all of those things mean, and no, I am not going to explain them now.

Although if you want to talk about how ‘nut graf’ sounds dirty, I am down for spending some serious time on that activity. We denizens of the Rogue Ink Pub are creative folk, and I am betting that many of you are unable to resist constructing a joke featuring the words ‘lede’, ‘nut graf’, ’solid body’, and ‘kicker’. Don’t fight the urge. Give in. Whoever makes the best dirty joke involving those words, I will officially buy them a drink. No, I am not kidding. A real one. PayPal was invented for purposes just such as these. Ten bucks to the winner. Spread the word.

The point is (see how these tangents happen?), I may not be useful every day, or even most days. I’ll talk about writing, and running a business, because that is more or less what my life consists of right now. I hope that following me around on that path teaches you something, or entertains you. It won’t be a straight path, though. I am going to go down side roads and I am going to hijack you and make you come with me. I’ll try to take you through some pretty scenery. Or at least a funny word or two. Like ‘biscuit’ or ‘monkey’.

Heh. Biscuit monkey.

I Don’t Want to Talk Business.

I don’t want to tell you how to write a good press release today. I’ve been writing press releases all day. Some other day, when I’ve been writing, oh, I don’t know, instructions for toothpick boxes, I will tell you how to write a press release, and it will be hilarious stuff, because I will not at that moment want to stab the inventor of the press release through the eye with a plastic spork. Or I will at least be better able to resist the urge. Actually, no, no I won’t. If I ever have a really good reason to attack anyone with a plastic spork, I believe I will succumb to this temptation. It would take a better woman than I to resist a good Spork Attack.

I can tell you the dumb stuff people try to do with their press releases. I can tell you all of the secret things for which I wish I could write press releases (spoiler: the Guiness Book of World Records and my pinkie toe feature rather largely). I can tell you if the press release I wrote for my own business bombed horribly. PLEASE do not expect serious guidance on how to write a good press release in my pub. If you really want that information, come to the office, Good Ink, and I will write one for you. It will be great. I won’t be able to explain how it happened. Which brings me to . . .

I Cannot Make You A Better Writer

I thought a lot about this one, and I sincerely believe it is true. If you want to become a better writer, you should read, listen, and write, and you should do all of them a LOT. My diagramming out the components of writing structure will never make you a good writer. My high school English teachers used to hate me, because I never screwed up my grammar or misspelled a word, and yet I could not diagram a sentence. Still can’t. I CAN tell you when it is WRONG. What is wrong is generally funnier than what is right. Let’s go for funny, shall we?

THIS IS WRONG. NEVER DO THIS. NOT IF YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF SIGNAGE IN ENGLAND. IF YOU ARE TWITTERING, THEN FINE, I FORGIVE YOU.

I do. I forgive you. But the phoenixes are still PISSED.

The War on English exists because bad writing hurts me. Right here, in my Sad Place. Good writing is important to me, but this does not mean that I can explain it. In fact, trying to explain how to write well makes my head hurt. Douglas Adams said the secret to flying was simply to fall down and miss. The secret to good copywriting? Don’t be boring. I can say it many different ways, but that will always be the essence of my copywriting advice. Boring people suck. Do not be one of them.

I Am An Ignorant Wench

I don’t know the 12 Steps to Success. I am busy drowning in the Wading Pool of What-the-Hell-IS-All-This? I am here to tell you the story about the Happy Man, to rant about lumberjacks or running the perfect con. I am here to entertain you as best I can while keeping my head above water, trying to turn a talent for writing into a solid business. I think that freelancing is a fucking amazing life, and I hope my little rants and anecdotes make those of you who are stuck in your nine-to-fives psyched about quitting one day. Tomorrow’s a good day for that, by the by. Or today. Today is good. The pub will cheer you when you come see us tonight.

One day I will actually have a pub. I will call it the Laughing Rogue (or, if my Tessa has her way, the Lusty Weevil), and I will invite all of you amazing entrepreneurs, nine-to-fivers, dreamers, Quakers, bakers, candlestick makers, and yes, really brave clients, to come and hang out in it and discuss writing and freelancing and life. Until then, I have this blog, and that’s pretty great too. I’m glad you’re all here.

Subscribe. The night is young.

Bloody Hell, or Why Rogue Ink is Not a Business Blog

My mother finally got around to coming over to my blog (she claims I never sent her a link, but she lies. She lied when she told me I couldn’t have a cupcake, too. She is an excellent liar when she chooses to be. Where do you think I learned the roguish tendencies?). She’s also a marketing expert, so the very first thing she did after she told me she loves my writing (because the mom gene comes first) was send me an itemized list of questions and critiques. Number one on this list - yes, she numbered this list - was:

1. Why swear or use off-color language when your clients (and mother) might read them and be put-off?

It took me awhile to answer this question, but I can almost guarantee the next nine words are going to make my poor mom sorry she asked it.

This Blog is Not My Business. It’s My Pub.

Here’s how I think about it. My business, Good Ink, is my place of work. Actually ‘place of work’ sounds awfully hoity-toity. It’s my office. It’s my nose-grinder. It’s the place with the flourescent lights and the water cooler and that accounting guy who picks his nose in front of you. I spend my whole day there, and I like my work, but when I’m done, I am done.

This blog, Rogue Ink, is the pub I go to after work. It’s where all my buddies are, where other people who work hard all day can hang out and commiserate. Brett Legree is here in his kilt and Naomi Dunford is mocking him about it, and Bob Younce is here talking stuff over with James Chartrand, and I am trying to say something funny enough to get Sandie Law to snort something out of her nose. There are a couple new guys here too, and we’re going to make them play darts later, and they don’t even know it.

If a client comes on into the bar, that’s great, and I will probably offer to buy that client a beer. By and large, I really like my clients, and I am thoroughly psyched if my client wants to come and hang out at my blog. However, I do not expect that client to be shocked that I said the word ‘hell’ to the barkeep while ordering him his drink. We are no longer in the office. We are at the pub. We’re going to tell stories and shoot the breeze and talk about other things than business. Later there’s going to be a pinata and a reggae band and Wendi Kelly and Matt Tuley will sing karaoke duets. It will be awesome.

That Damned Polonius Quote Again

This is all Harrison’s fault. “To thine own self be true,” he said, but he also said this, and I liked this better: “The thing is, this is your personality. If you try to fit your site/blog into something you’re not, it will show through and no amount of sprucing up will help you with that inconsistency.“

He is right. I am a funny, funny chick. I make people laugh. I get my client’s voices because I like talking to them, finding out about them, and I like knowing what cracks them up. If they want to hire a copywriter who really gets them and can also handle the professional part of meeting deadlines and marketing strategically, they have found their woman. If they want someone who never says a word stronger than ‘darn’ and would faint at the very idea of an off-color pun, they should hire someone else. I will refer them myself. I don’t want those people unhappy. If I can’t make them happy, I will send them to someone who can.

I can make an awful lot of people happy, though. I know. I’ve tried.

There’s Nothing For ‘Em Here

Mitch Hedberg tells a good story. I like this one: “I was in downtown Boise Idaho and I saw a duck. I knew the duck was lost, because ducks aren’t supposed to be downtown. There’s nothing for ‘em there.” True. There’s nothing for ducks in downtown Boise, Idaho. And there is nothing for clients seeking posts on copywriting at Rogue Ink.

I know there’s a possibility clients may come around the blog just looking for useful information and articles on copywriting. I am sorry to tell them we do not offer that service at this pub. We offer useful information and articles, made to deliver, all day long at Good Ink. Here at the pub we mostly tell jokes about weevil sex and make fun of bad grammar. Sometimes we touch on copywriting, but it is bounded by jokes about being broke and frosted with rants about cheese, and I am pretty sure they were looking for something more straightforward than that.

I know that it may take them awhile to figure this out, because other blogs often have useful information, and they are not yet aware that we don’t play by the books over here at the Rogue Ink pub. And while they are figuring it out, it is possible they might see a bad word. So I will probably, when the website is up and running, have something right at the top of the blog that indicates this is not a Shop O’ Useful Copywriting Tips. It is a Pub O’ Awesomely Random. And if the client is still down to hear all about that, he should pull up a stool.

Aretha Knows What’s Up

Respect goes a long, long way. I’m not going to curse at my clients just to make them upset. I’m actually not going to curse at anyone to make them upset. Very frequently, though, I cuss not because I am being offensive or mean (unless we are talking about Hitler again), but because I am really freakin’ excited. I have noticed this rubs off on my commenters, too, and that’s great. When a commenter tells me a post I’ve written on here was fucking awesome, I expect a client to know that this not cause for alarm. This is actually good for them. People do not get that psyched about mediocre writing. If my writing can inspire a delighted oath or two, that is also - if I may use the term - fucking awesome. My clients are savvy people. They know from complimentary cursing.

I respect my clients. I respect that some of them are made uncomfortable by off-color language in their business affairs. I respect that, and I promise I won’t do it around them when we’re talking business. Since I have a pretty good radar for that sort of thing, I will probably even anticipate it before it becomes an issue. No one need ever worry about going to my website, hiring me for a gig, and having me make them uncomfortable. They might need to worry a teeny bit about me knocking their socks off, but that is okay. I will buy them new socks. It’s part of the package deal.

Those clients who don’t want to see me when I’m off duty over here at Rogue Ink absolutely do not have to. I won’t treat them any differently and I certainly won’t work for them any less hard. If they want to see only my professional side, that is okay with me. I personally feel my rogue side is equally awesome, especially because it wears leather and throws knives more often, but all do not share my tastes, and I respect that. I’ll meet those clients at the office in the morning. I’ll have their first draft ready for them.

What Happened to Mom?

I read her, verbatim, with all the cuss words in it, Naomi’s post from yesterday. And she laughed so hard she choked on a hiccup.

Tune in tomorrow and I’ll tell you why the Rogue Ink pub is a different kind of blog, and why you should all hang out in it and play darts. It’s going to be revolutionary - my first blog post written in advance. I actually feel a little faint.

Subscribe if you believe in rogues. It’s the only way to save me.

Versatility, Hats, and the Happy Man

Charlotte was versatile. You remember Charlotte, right? With the web? Well, she was. She made a huge egg sac and Wilbur was looking at it and she said, by way of explanation, that she was versatile.

“Does ‘versatile’ mean ‘full of eggs’?” Wilbur asked.

“No. Versatile means that I can change with ease from one thing to the next.”

Which is how you know that Charlotte’s Web was one of the best children’s books ever. NezSez did a fantastic post yesterday on versatility, and I wanted to riff off of it, since versatility is one of the things that’s been amazingly useful to me as a writer and a business owner (she says, as though it has been SO LONG since she became that latter thing).

Sure. I can do that.

I would never, ever utter those words again if I weren’t versatile. When you’re a freelance writer, you very rarely see the same project or the same subject twice in a row. One week you’re writing about a cow’s gastrointestinal tract and the next you’re writing about underprivileged children in downtown Oakland and five minutes later you’re writing weird trivia facts about chocolate.

Favorite trivia fact about chocolate: A survey of office workers in London found that almost three quarters would reveal their network-access password in exchange for a bar of chocolate. Now that I know what the going rate is, I’m holding out for two bars.

If I worried about having the exact relevant experience necessary for each job as it presented itself to me, I’d never write again. But I don’t. I’m versatile. I’ll write about chocolate, and then I’ll write about electronic resumes, and then I’ll write about modern art. Different voices, different backgrounds, different set of facts. One of the great things about being versatile is that you’re never bored, and you’re never boring. And as we’ve established over here in Rogueville, being bored sucks, and being boring sucks more.

Mad Hatting

It finally happened. Wendi made the Tei party joke. And since she has, let us celebrate with a Mad Hatting Tei Party, and talk about wearing different hats in a business.

I get to be a lot of people in my business. I’m the project manager and the head honcho (a VERY cool hat, by the by, like something out of Dr. Seuss) and the secretary (what, like you have someone to make your coffee for you?) and the accountant (surprisingly cool hat, it’s one of those visors the money-counters wear in Vegas) and the marketing director (evidently, no hat, but a yellow jumpsuit and a katana) and, of course, the copywriter, or as I like to think of it, the talent (beret. What? I look great in berets).

Versatility is your friend when running your business. You can’t have someone call and ask you for a price quote and say, “I’m sorry, but I’m wearing my head honcho hat right now, I’ll have to refer you to my secretary hat.” You are all hats, and no hat, and every hat individually. You are Zen and the Art of Hatting, my friend. That is what versatility is.

Wisdom from a Cabbie

This is a true story, so parts of it aren’t funny. It’s worth the payoff, though. Come along with me.

When I was moving out of my apartment in Chicago into another one, I left everything too late. I tried to move everything, by myself, in the Chicago heat, which is another way of saying I wandered into hell and tried to take over for Sisyphus. I was so stressed out and unable to sleep that I actually gave myself shingles. Yes, that is correct. Old people’s chicken pox. If you are insane enough, you too can fool your body into thinking it is past menopause and on into second childhood.

There was a great moment where my man-friend at the time convinced me that some of this stuff just wasn’t worth it, and we spent a delightful hour or so throwing all my glassware twenty-two stories down a garbage chute. It was wonderful and it didn’t last long enough.

The final morning, I had six boxes that needed to be transported from one apartment to the other. I had not slept at all. We both had flights to catch. The moving van had already been returned, since I couldn’t afford to keep it an extra day. We called a cab.

The cabbie showed up on time, driving a cab-van. I was so thrilled that he had a huge van instead of a little cab that I ran outside and said something blatantly honest, which is not generally wise if you have not slept and you have shingles: “We are going to be a huge pain in the ass for the next three hours, but there is a huge tip at the end of it for you if you can help us out.”

The cabbie, who was tall, dreadlocked, about thirty, and looked like he’d rather be doing Capoeira or some other highly difficult martial art, immediately perked up. Versatility, people, I’m telling you. “What can I do?” he said, and we had a friend and an ally. He not only folded down the seats in the back of the van, but helped my man-friend carry all six of the boxes up three full flights of stairs and refused to let me do anything. I suspect this was because I looked like the living dead, but it was still sweet.

While we were driving to the airport, my man-friend inquired after the best fare the cabbie had ever had.

Immediately, the cabbie said, “The happy man.” My man-friend and I waited in the backseat. We can see a good story coming. We know from introductions. “There was one man, older man, and he was just incredibly happy, shone all over with it. And I asked him, I said, wow, you look like you’re having a good day.”

The man says, calmly, as though he’d thought about it before, “I’m always having a good day.”

The cabbie was a little startled. “That’s . . . that’s unusual.”

“I suppose,” says the old man, and smiles at him.

“Look,” the cabbie says after a moment of thinking about it. “I don’t suppose there’s any wisdom you have that you can offer a young guy like me, just trying to figure it out.”

The man leaned back into his seat and smiled. “Well,” says the old man. “There’s one thing. I learn something new every year.“

Versatility. That old man learned to wire electricity one year, learned glassblowing another, learned how to take a car apart and put it back together again, learned to play the guitar. Every year, he picked something he didn’t know anything about, and in his spare time, he learned all about it. And he found that every new thing he learned made him happier, because he understood more and more about the way the world worked. He never stopped learning. As he neared the end of his life, he was happy enough that a young Chicago cabbie was so taken by his air of contentedness that he asked him to impart some wisdom upon him, as though any of us ever actually says such things to each other any more.

That’s the story. From my Chicago cabbie to you. Learn something new, be a jack of all trades. It will make you better at life.

I hope that’s useful to you. I stopped being sarcastic just to tell you that story. But hell, I can be sentimental sometimes. I’m versatile that way.

I am also full of eggs. Omelettes for dinner are the best.

Subscribe. Roguishness is always versatile.

Out of Context: The Hat

“That hat is making my shoes hurt.”

I thought the chick who said this was nuts, but I looked, and she was absolutely right. That hat made ALL of me hurt. Shoes and everything.