Welcome to Stressful Blogging 101

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to embark on a quest to decipher a syllabus for a free course on Stressful Blogging 101.

Photo by BLW Photography

Should you choose to enroll, your first assignment is to dissect every line of the following poem and contrast it with its linked post. Don’t necessarily look for the obvious. The headline is not always The Event.

If you haven’t droppped out at this point, the second assignment for Stressful Blogging 101 is to identify the type of poem and search within this blog for another example.

Grades for the course will be given out at the end of the term.

In order to pass Stressful Blogging 101, you just have to attain the right mind-set.

Off you go, then.

Something in my head is wrong
Throbbing tension, water cannon
Restraining order crushing stimuli
Ears burning
Senses dimming
Snap! maniacal vertigo
Frothing foaming Saint Vitus duel
Utter mental catacomb:
Lethal.

Bid this twisted, braided pain adieu
Loosen the psychotic pressure cuff
Open my bloodshot eyes
Glean the harvest into sheaves
Gathered from my lyric Muse
Inspiration, crystal clear
Nowhere is the lesson better taught:
Grand were the mountains worn down by simple waves.

Photo by bark

Stressful Blogging 101 was a posting challenge from John Sullivan of BloggerLuv.com which, sadly, no longer exists.

The actual challenge was to see who would rank the highest for the keyword Stressful Blogging 101. I concede one point by making another: focus on what you’re good at doing. There may still be stress, but it is the honest sweat of a labor of love.

For me, stressful blogging comes, not from struggling to crank out content, but as a result of the effort of producing something memorable, useful or clever, such as a thematic double acrostic poem.

Much of the joy of creating things with words lies in frolicking word play. Take another look at the tenth line of the poem. If you know that the French word for bread is pain, you’ll appreciate the tomfoolery hidden there. On a serendipitous note, reading the line as “Farewell to french bread” would lead to a surprise that only Google can provide.

This post takes up the #7Link Challenge issued by proBlogger’s Darren Rowse.

Photo by whatmegsaid
The rules are simple and fun!

The idea is to publish a post that is a list of 7 links to posts that you and others have written that respond to the following 7 categories. Your links should be to:

• Your first post
• A post you enjoyed writing the most
• A post which had a great discussion
• A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
• Your most helpful post
• A post with a title that you are proud of
• A post that you wish more people had read

You might like to add a few explanations to different links – for example to talk a little about why you enjoyed writing a post or what you like about the post on another blog that you link to . . .

Visit Darren’s post to get more details, if you wish to participate!
So, here goes:

My First Post

Hello World
If you look at the permalink, I tried to make a point, here. Since this is a links post, I can only refer to the first post on my self-hosted blog. My real first post was uploaded to the now defunct WritingUp.com, titled I Wonder If I am an Artist or an Engineer:

I wonder if I am an artist or an engineer. I am not trained in either field, yet there are moments of Athenian inspiration during which ideas spring forth full-blown from the right side of my head. Afterwards, the sinister side takes control and attempts to systematically mold the nascent creation into an elegant framework.
I see the result of this one-two punch in everything that I do – be it designing a game, writing software, teaching abstract concepts to my children, teaching abstract concepts to adults, supervising co-workers, brain-storming with colleagues, writing poetry or posting in forums. I think it’s called style. If so, then I’ve finally developed my own synaptic fingerprint.
The need to create is visceral. There is a parallel between the arousal of neural pathways and my constant association of disparate things to one another. At the biological level, new connections between nerve cells enable my brain to store and recall information more efficiently. At the conscious level, new associations between objects and concepts enable my idea pipeline to flow. Often, when I’m reading an issue of Science News, I’ll get an idea for a game. Maybe a clever commercial will ignite a marketing plan for real estate. When admonishing one of my younger children, I may create a parable to explain why he should consider changing his behavior. Each of these mental activities is deliberate and leads to copious note writing or manipulation of words and gestures calculated to give concrete form to my thoughts.
Successful instances of this whole-brain thinking leave me feeling warm and fuzzy; however, evoking mental monstrosities, half-baked hypotheses and idiotic ideas cause me to wonder if I am merely a conceit and a Doppelgänger, rejoicing overmuch at my own introspection, while sowing confusion and misguided information.

This has been the overarching thread, thesis and essence of my blog.

A Post I Most Enjoyed Writing

Grave Error
Wordplay is my reason for living. My dad influenced me in this pastime. While it was a response to another meme, I wrote it with Pop in mind. Naturally, I cherish his comment on the post:

By Hillard Allen on Jan 27, 2008

Some say it’s heredity and some say it’s environment. But why should I try to embrace this subject with my parent theses?

Papa

A Conversation Starter

Social Media Manifesto
All my friends came out to chat

A Post I Wish I Had Written

From Visitor to Downloader to Purchaser
I loved the tone, the style and the content. On top of that, Patrick McKenzie is a kindred spirit:

My mother has a talent for being totally unembarassed to ask businesses, bureacrats, service workers, & etc to do something which is strongly out of the ordinary and deterimental to them. My mother is also the only person I have ever met in my life like this. For the vast majority of people, asking for “special treatment” is unsettling. You want to do a psychology experiment to prove this? Next time you go out to dinner with friends, tell one you’ll pay him $10 if he asks the waitress about Windows vs. Mac when she comes to order and can keep the conversation going for more than 60 seconds. Most people recoil at the thought of doing this — it’s very meiwaku* to the waitress, and people feel a deep sense of shame in causing meiwaku for other people. (* meiwaku is a Japanese term for which there is no handy English equivalent. It’s a type of imposition or nuisance which is not socially appropriate. Not shaving before you come to work is meiwaku with regards to everyone you have to deal with. Coming late to a meeting and holding everyone up is meiwaku. That sort of thing. What can I say, I’m still a teacher at heart and love words.)

My Most Helpful Post

PayPal at the Pump – Don’t Get Burned
For a while, this was the top-searched post on my blog. Thanks to all the love being spread on BloggerLuv.com, this is no longer the case. However, the PayPal post is still informative, compared to the recent links with more hits.

A Post With a Great Title

Smoking the Information Pipe
Although it evokes a negative image, it captures attention without being clever – an affliction affecting many of my titles.

A Post Needing More Eyeballs

Marxist Internet Propaganda
It’s nice to have a chance to plug what should have been a post, had I not been too chicken to “put it out there” as an essay. I didn’t want to come off like I knew what I was talking about … cluck-cluck. The few times I’ve linked to this fictionalized essay in serious discussions, it was well-received.

Photo by Tony the Misfit*

Pinhole heaped a heavenly helping of Honest Scrap Award upon me. Having mistook this for a Commemorative Metal of Honor for the erstwhile Rex 3000, I was not going to write this post until I learned that this is an award won before the recipient actually earns it! I’m supposed to “tell on myself” with ten juicy tidbits of truths known just by me. Frankly, I think these memes are an attempt to gain all of the possible information a home invasion crook needs to make it more difficult for me to signal my wife to not come home, but call the cops: “Darling, don’t forget the ricotta,” knowing full well from this meme that I never have called my wife “Darling.”

How symbolic! In naming the award “Honest Scrap”, one is pre-empted from absconding with said trophy prior to justifying its place on the bookshelf. Yet, like any good swindler knows, the hustle is only as good as the presumption of a guilty conscience. And therein lies my dilemma: if I don’t earn the Honest Scrap Award, I’m a swindler; if I do post, then I’m a wimp with a conscience.
This reminds me of the time when I told my cousin I would pay him to beat up Nate Blackwell’s little brother, Tony.

You may not know Nate, he played basketball for the Temple University Owls. Long before he became a legend in Philadelphia sports, he was just “Day-Day” from up the street. While he was a likable chap, his brother was a little snot. He actually spit on me once and ran into the house – as if the first order of business was for me to go chasing him, with flecks of saliva flying off my cheek!

Anyway, we used to play “street” football. Tony and I would play against Nate and my cousin, Peter. Sometimes, there would be other fools and we would have six or even seven of us (remember the “Steady Quarterback” who threw for both teams?) running, diving and recklessly endangering our skin and bones. Imagine a narrow street, just large enough to allow parked cars on one side and nothing larger than an ice cream truck to amble from Tasker St. to Pt. Breeze Avenue. A typical South Philadelphia cross street.

I stayed summers with my grandmother in this concrete jungle. While other little kids (including my wife) went “to the country” to be with their grannies and pop-pops, I tackled dirty street urchins on glass-strewn sidewalks. Well, we had the fire hydrant, you had the garden hose. Nanny-nanny boo-boo! You haven’t lived until you’ve run around in the blast from a fire hydrant. We didn’t bother with the soup can cannon, either! We just laced our fingers together and bravely “hugged the plug”.

Too bad the hydrant wasn’t running when Tony spit on me; I’d have dunked his little ass. That’s another thing. I cursed like a sailor.
Unless lumberjacks curse worse, in which case, I cursed like they did. My relatives thought I was crazy. I did, too. I was doing road rage before I learned how to drive. Hell, I probably invented it, although my late aunt gave as good as she got, behind the wheel.

We used to walk to school, then come home for lunch before going back. One day, a man nearly ran me over, coming out of a gas station. I gave him my best Rudy Ray Moore epithet and continued on my way. My cousin, himself a badass back in the day, was shocked. I know this is so because he has never forgotten this event. He brings it up at family gatherings, peppering it with all the little nuances that little cousins recall:

Mitchell raised his fist and called that man a #&@##!!-X$###@!

Then that man slammed on his brakes, jumped out of the car and said, “WHAT?!!”



Mitchell took off down the street! I laughed so hard.

Whatever, man.

Another time, we were playing wall ball, or pitching pennies. Maybe we were just standing in the middle of the street. Suddenly, one of the neighbors, who must have just gotten his license, backed his car into my leg. It didn’t hurt, but I was so startled, I yelped, “Sugar honey iced tea!” – pretty much the same way Ralphie said, “Fudge”. Pete promptly ran into our grandmother’s house, not to report the accident, but to tattle on me. Thankfully, the perceived trauma of having been struck by a moving vehicle was enough to grant me forbearance on what otherwise would have been a for-sure spanking.

I grew up all over Philadelphia, covering every region except the great Northeast. Good thing, too. I took an evening Real Estate Licensing class during a three month period. Twice a week, after getting off from work, I took the R8 train out to the end of the line.
This neighborhood, Fox Chase, is one of the most beautiful sections of the city (Chestnut Hill and Roxborough are the others.)
What was not to like? Well, for starters, the bus service stopped 15 minutes before my class ended. I had to walk for about ten minutes to reach the train station. The other thing, there was no good pizza for miles. Not that I tried all of the shops, I’m just saying.

The boardwalk at Wildwood, NJ had the best pizza on the planet. Except for that time when I grabbed the glass sugar container and sprinkled what I thought was some salt onto my slice. Not satisfied with the results, I liberally dashed sugar onto my pizza until it became inedible.

Well, that’s nine scraps and one fib (I didn’t really ask my cousin to beat up anybody. I did what any good boy would do when spat upon – I told his mother!)

The tenth scrap ties together my childhood memories of South Philadelphia and my emergent self-expression as a young adult:

Remember those scams where you received a letter in the mail, inviting you to send in a poem for a contest?
I sent one in, commemorating the innocent children gunned down during drug violence.
I got a form letter from the “Poetry School”, telling me that my poem was a winner. For once, I believed them.

How’s that for an Honest Scrap?