Oh Twitter. We can always count on you to rub the salt in America’s gaping wounds.
Smart asses from all over the Internet have descended onto #brianwilliamsmisremembers to engage in the wisecrackery of placing Williams at the scene of all manner of historical and fictional events.
Even this jerk weasel got in on the action:
All my reports were based on posts on a bulletin board. Drop your mug in disbelief America #BrianWilliamsMisremembers
If you’re not following @bookshelfbattle then you’re missing out on all the snarky goodness! And if you act fast, you can be my 3000th follower, which will win you…absolutely nothing! Well, it will win you my undying gratitude and devotion.
So yeah, in other words, you win nothing. But follow me anyway! Surely being my 3000th twitter follower will get you bragging rights…if you’re in a room of people who care about mundane things.
If you have the time, you can check and see that every day in the month of January 2015, I made at least one post per day. I’ve been thinking about challenging myself to making one post per day on this blog in 2015, but wanted to get through one month before committing to the idea.
So, consider me committed. And frankly, for agreeing to do this, I should be committed.
My theory: Daily posts = more readers = more site traffic = an overall stronger platform.
Your theory probably = do less posts, idiot, and the posts you do, make them quality. Quality is better than quantity!
And it is! I’m not disagreeing. A great feature of Word Press is that you are allowed to schedule posts in advance. Many of my short posts are written and scheduled to appear on different days. I write a bunch in one sitting when I have that most precious of commodities: free time.
MY SELF-IMPOSED RULES
1) 1 post every day now until Jan 1 2016.
2) These posts do not have to have any level of awesomeness. In fact, I’m fairly certain there will be busy times where I will simply post something like “I like waffles!” or “How’s everyone doing today?”
3) I will try my best not to allow quantity to override quality. These short posts can be rattle off quickly, so hopefully I’ll make time to post more in-depth material. This might even lead to more than one post a day, though only one post a day is required.
SUBSIDIARY GOALS
One post per day on this blog for the whole year is all I need to consider myself a success. However, here are some other goals I’d like to accomplish this year:
1) Comment on at least one other WordPress blogger’s blog per day.
2) Tweet one tweet per day.
3) Said tweets or comments do not have to be Shakespeare but can be short and sweet as time allows.
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS – GOALS BASED ON THE NUMBERS
Based on figures from last year, I have noticed that when I don’t post for long periods of time, the best I can hope for is around 10 visitors (average) a day.
Last year, during my Halloween daily post-a-thon for the last half of October, I noticed a spike in visitors to around 35-40 (average) daily. This is when it first popped into my mind to do a 2015 year long post-a-thon.
At the time of this writing, I’m averaging 35-40 site visitors per day. I believe this is due to daily postings.
I’m also seeing an increase in blog followers. I had 400 at the start of the year, and about 450 now.
I had 2000 twitter followers at the start of the year, I’m at around 2500 now.
I’m not sure if there is anyway to guarantee this, in fact I’m certain there isn’t – but here is what I am hoping for:
By the end of 2015 – to have 1000 blog followers (i.e. people who click that little follow button on my wordpress blog) and 5000 twitter followers.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q – Could this all blow up in your face?
A – Yes. Yes it could.
Q – Are you setting yourself up for disappointment?
A – Yes. Yes I am.
Q- I can see it now. You post 364 out of 365 days then on Dec 31, 2015 you get hit by a bus.
A – That bus better have Wi-Fi.
Q – Shouldn’t it be about quality over quantity?
A- Yes.
Q – Then why this quest for quantity?
A – Because as wannabe writers, we are all basically pouring our drops into the same water bucket. There are so many of us and blog readers and twitter followers only have so much time. If you don’t catch them at the time they’re checking their feeds, then chances are, you won’t catch them. More content = more chances to attract readers.
Q – That’s rather Machiavellian.
A – (turns around in my swivel chair, petting a white cat) Muah ha ha! MUAH HA HA!
Q – Who is asking you these questions?
A- I am.
Q – You’re interviewing yourself?
A- Yes.
Q- Takes a big ego do to that, doesn’t it?
A – It does.
Keep me honest folks! If you see a day where I don’t post, call me out on the carpet and pelt me with verbal tomatoes!
365 Days. 365 Posts. 1 Nerd. The Bookshelf Battle 2015 All-Year Post-a-thon is officially announced!
There’s a lot of cool stuff going on there, a bit overwhelming when you’re first getting into it, but I do enjoy the writer, blogger, self-publishing communities, etc.
Oh, and as always, you can follow me on twitter @bookshelfbattle
Thanks for stopping by. You keep reading, I’ll keep writing.
I recommend their stuff, just check out Amazon and you’ll find them. I’ve yet to read The Beam but it looks like something Sci-Fi lovers would be into. I do love a good robot story so I will have to check out Robot Proletariat. I enjoyed Daniel Wilson’s Robopacalypse, and the sadly now canceled Almost Human on FOX, so anything with robots, I’m down.
I did read Johnny B. Truant’s Fat Vampire. I went into it thinking, “Well, he’s probably just going to bust on fat people,” but it was actually a story with some heart that showed the struggles that “Reginald” goes through.
They also have a series called Unicorn Western, which is basically, just as the title says, a Western where cowboys ride Unicorns. Cool idea.
I refer to them as “they” like they’re interchangeable, so I’m sorry, I don’t always remember which one did which book, or which of them worked together on which books, but in general, the three of them have some good self-published stuff out there, and I can’t say enough about Write Publish Repeat.
Have you ever listened to epic self-publishers Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright riff about their self-publishing adventures? It’s fun, and aside from the jokes and profanity, they sometimes even make a point or provide you with useful information!
Plus, I’ve enjoyed their non-fiction book, Write. Publish. Repeat. I enjoy Johnny’s mantra that you don’t have to wait for lightning to strike (i.e. get that infamous bestseller) but rather, outwork the need for a lightning strike (i.e. write many novels that sell at decent levels, rather than one that sells at a blockbuster pace).
Bookshelf Battler, here with another movie review. So many movie reviews lately I should probably rename this site “Movie Shelf Battle” except that would not make sense, since movies aren’t put on shelves anymore.
But I digress.
So after all the hoopla, after the big hacking scandal, after the international hullabaloo, I finally had the chance to watch The Interview starring Seth Rogen and James Franco.
How do I say this? I think the hackers might have accidentally done the boys a big favor.
I don’t mean they did them a favor in getting the movie pulled from – well, I’ve lost track, first it was every theater, then it was some theaters. How did you see it? I paid to rent it and Rogen and Franco now have 6 bucks I’ll never get back. Lousy Hollywood types.
My thoughts? Overall, the film is so-so and ultimately, kind of forgettable. All of the free publicity caused by the hacking scandal will probably get this movie more views and downloads than it ever would have on its own, from people who will tune in just to see what all the fuss is about.
I love comedy. Comedy is the most honest form of entertainment there is. With drama, you can say you like it, that you even get it, but secretly you didn’t like it. You’re just saying you like it to fit in and be cool. But comedy? If something tickles your funny bone, you will involuntarily laugh. You might try to hold back, but if something is funny enough, you would be able to hold back. And to its credit, The Interview did have a few moments where it did make me do just that.
But in my opinion, Hollywood has been on kind of a losing streak when it comes to comedy, and I mean laugh out loud, slap your knees all the way through the film comedy. I haven’t seen a comedy that made me laugh from beginning to end since the original The Hangover in 2009. So that’s, what? Five, coming on six years since Hollywood has provided me with a genuine laugh all the way through the movie knee-slapper.
Do you mind if I give you SPOILERS? Hell, the spoilers are pretty much out there already, aren’t they?
So, basic premise of the movie – Franco is Dave Skylark and Rogen is Aaron Rappaort. Together, they are a duo that hosts and produces a celebrity gossip interview show – Skylark Tonight. Rappaport feels the need to engage in more serious journalism. The duo learn that Kim Jong Un is a fan of the show, so they arrange for, dun dun dun – an Interview.
The CIA learns of this and convinces the pair to try and assassinate Kim Jong Un, and I actually thought the film, rather than provide a caricature, actually provided an actor that is a bit tougher looking than the Dear Leader, but that’s just my two cents.
The funnier parts of the movie come from Rogen and Franco training on how to use a special Ricin poison strip on their hand, which they plan to deploy to Un with a poisoned handshake. Naturally, the bumblers put the Ricin everywhere but Un’s hand.
At the end of the movie, Skylark and Rappaport, aided by North Korea’s turncoat propaganda minister, who secretly wants a free NK, decide not to kill Un but instead, to ambush him on air with hard hitting questions that will humiliate him and public and convince the North Koreans to reject him.
Skylark rattles off a lot of important questions about concentration camps, how the country spent 800 million on nukes when it has 16 million people starving, and so on. Arguably, the film actually does provide a lot of important info to the American people, things a lot of inattentive Americans never thought about, namely that North Korea is a nuclear nation capable of launching a nuclear attack on the West Coast. Yeah…yeah…sorry if you’re on the West Coast and you just read that, but try to get some sleep tonight anyway. Probably not gonna happen. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
So toward the end of the movie, I think, “Wow, Rogen and Franco, how smart – they’ve used the assassination plot story line as just a pretext to reach an actual interview in which a lot of important political questions are asked, and important info is provided in a funny way. But then, of course, they go ahead and have a final confrontation scene where Franco and Rogen, in a tank, go head to head with Un, in a helicopter, in a final battle royale to the finish. So much for closing out the movie with a little dignity.
Like I said, it is not without its funny moments, moments that will make you laugh, but I doubt it will join the ranks of films I will ever bother watching again, so I think had the hackers just left this one alone, it probably would have easily faded into obscurity on its own. Now with all the hype – I mean, Hell, my Grandkids one day will probably come up to me and be all like, “Hey Grandpa, what was that movie by those two doofuses that almost started World War III?”
I’m glad Sony did distribute the film, because to allow bullies to tell us what we can and can’t watch is just plain wrong – but sheesh, this was kind of a stinker of a film to get into such a major international argument about.
On a final note – this was a major event in direct to download movie distribution. That topic was discussed earlier this year with the announcement that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 would be released directly to Netflix. Personally, I’m against direct to download first time movie releases, and I hope that all three of my regular readers, including my Aunt Gertrude, will feel the same way.
Why? Go ahead ask me why.
Because I feel like that would just totally destroy the movie theater industry. And sure, you might think back to the time you got ripped off at the theaters and had to spend a ridiculous sum on candy and popcorn but honestly – let me repeat, honestly – do you really want to see a day where going out to the movies on a Friday night becomes a thing of the past? I certainly don’t.
Bookshelf Battle 