A friend of mine asked me for some advice last week. He’s preparing to leave the military, and thought writing might be his next career. Did I have any pearls of wisdom?
I gave him two main pieces of advice. The second one: he must understand that there’s no such thing as “writer’s block.”
I can’t just title this page “The End of the World” because that has been predicted before. And before that. And before that, and — well, you get the idea.
It always fascinates me how readers perceive me and the business behind This is True. This is the story of one reader’s …well… “interesting” impression.
A few thoughts about today’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The video coming out of there is horrific. There will surely be many thousands of casualties.
I write True to make a living, yes, and it’s gratifying that enough people support the publication to make that happen. But there’s another reason, too: I want to change the world just a little bit, on both a micro and a macro scale.
A few weeks ago I grumbled in a newsletter about the lousy ads I was getting on one of my sites, which were bringing a whopping 4.8 cents per click. I said “I may try Bing ads instead if Google doesn’t get me better [ads] soon.”
A special “extra” story this week. I’ve pulled it out separately because it doesn’t “really” fit in with True’s theme. While it is a bit weird, it’s certainly not about someone doing something stupid.
I generally don’t want suggestions for True’s Honorary Unsubscribe feature; my usual problem is having far too many possibilities for the one slot each week. In July 2009 a new trend started: people wanting me to do an Honorary Unsubscribe write-up for Ed Freeman, a brave Vietnam War helicopter pilot who saved about 30 shot-up kids and was awarded the Medal of Honor — the U.S.’s highest military decoration.
I’ve heard from several friends who spotted me in the Wall Street Journal today. It was just a tiny mention in an article about the Dvorak keyboard, an ergonomic alternative to the common “Qwerty” layout that you probably use.
My email address has been around online for many, many years, and it gets a lot of spam — many hundreds per day. For most users, spam far outstrips legitimate mail. It was 1996 that I realized that spam would become a huge problem, which is why I wrote my Spam Primer to educate my readers about it. And sadly I was right: it’s estimated that more than 90 percent of all email transmitted is spam. And how many of them get to my inbox? Lately, I’m averaging less than one a day.
A few comments about this week’s lead story, about the encounter between a bear and a Colorado woman. If the location sounds somehow familiar, it’s because that’s where I live.
The county I’m in is pretty small, population-wise: about 4,200 people. (Geography-wise, it’s medium for the west: about 550 square miles.) As you might guess, there’s not much shopping in my county, so for groceries we pop into Montrose, which is a town of about 16,000, and is only 20 minutes away. (Montrose County has a population of around 34,000 in 2,240 square miles.) So we know the town pretty well.
Something fairly profound happened to my wife and me Sunday. I have a group of friends that I communicate with regularly via an email list, and Sunday afternoon I shared what happened with them. One asked, “Great story. Will you be sharing it with your readers?”
Some readers will be a bit puzzled why I would spread this message in my blog: “Do not, under any circumstances, be interviewed by the police without advice from a lawyer.” You have a right to remain silent, and I urge you to exercise that right. Especially if you are innocent.
I’ve been using computers for many, many years now, and finally had something happen to me that has never happened before: a disk crash. It happened yesterday.
Anytime I run a “gun story” I get a lot of comment from both hugely polarized Americans, who want to rant for or against guns, and foreign readers, who don’t understand the American “obsession” with arms. I’m going to take a stab at helping foreign readers understand it a bit better. So first, the “gun story” that prompted this essay, from True’s 15 February 2009 issue:
Chris in Washington asks:
Randy: you’ve mentioned Twitter a couple of times, and I see you have a link on TRUE’s home page to your Twitter page. I’ve looked at Twitter a couple of times, and I just don’t get it. Do people really care that their friends (or favorite celebrities) are “Waking up to face the day.” or “Eating a bologna sandwich for lunch.”? Why?
You may have heard about the plane “crash” in Denver Saturday. A Continental jet taking off for Houston veered off the runway, went cross country for a bit, popped up over an airport service road, then collapsed on its belly and burst into flame. No one was killed.
I mentioned in my post last week that being in Washington D.C. was “more surreal than usual” because it was election time. Well, imagine being inside the White House just two days before the election! Because indeed, that’s where I was.
I had a pretty full weekend — I’m writing this while sitting in the airport, waiting for my plane to get me the rest of the way home. I had a very interesting trip to Washington D.C.; election time makes the town even more surreal than usual. My report next week will get into that a little bit more.