I know this has seen a lot of views.

For those who haven’t heres the link. It still makes me laugh very loudly

Cert 18

That said, there are some really good social media consultants out there. Just make sure they have the experience.

Tip: Social media is a psychological and marketing discipline that uses technology as a distribution tool. Don’t lose sight of that! Lot’s of people can talk about social media technologies, implementation, and use. Many can’t give you the intel and marketing strategy that will ensure success.

That’s all I have to say on social media for now. Simples eh?

I’m considering clumping my future two weeks of vacation together in the beginning of/mid-August and saving up for the trip until then. )

Paris, France, here I come??!!!

I get asked that more than what I consider to be normal. Despite this, I still have not been able to formulate a proper, coherent and (most importantly) believable answer. Part of the reason for that is cause in my head I have already started listing the things which are wrong. And part of the blame is cause I am not really sure how much the person really wants to know about me. I always suffer from the fear of imparting too much information.

Saw Humayun’s Tomb today. Beautiful. Vast, open spaces and these gorgeous buildings all around. Carefully maintained lanes of water running all around the place. I liked the quiet the most; the fact that there were hardly any people. And the fact that when you walk, the gravel goes crunch crunch. I like imagining these places the way they must have been a long time ago.

You think the guardsmen would be in a slight state of panic when they learn that the Queen is about to visit? Whispers running throughout the compound “Begum aa rahi hai”. I wonder what she would have worn. I like to imagine her as a haughty women, proud and in love. Sitting in the tomb and having a quiet moment to herself. Just a moment. Before she was politely pulled out of her memories.

As the itch to travel grows stronger, I have hatched a complicated series of plans. Almost all of them are based on going from point A to point B through a pre-arranged route and then making it from Point B to Home within a fixed amount of time. And spending a fixed amount of money. I guess that is one way to travel.

Saw two kids today. One was licking his ice-cream while standing near Humayun’s Tomb and yelling something in a foreign language. I could not understand what he was saying but I am pretty sure it was not anything like “Oh those minarets are such clear reflections of the Persian style”.

The other kid was standing on the seat in the Metro and staring out of the window. Yelling and waving to the trains passing by.

Both could have done with a pungi. Or at the very least, a sharp rap on the balls. Loud, annoying critters.

I never promised you a rose garden in the desert…

Recently, The Milwaukee Business Journal posted a Business Pulse Survey asking “Should regional leaders offer free water to lure businesses to southeastern Wisconsin?”  Although the majority of readers voted “NO,” there were still some folks in the area that wondered if “YES” might be an OK answer if the proposed plan contained provisions for the water to be cleaned and returned, and that assurances would be made that our plentiful water in the region would not be depleted by this practice.

In Milwaukee, we have many very talented, resourceful and creative business leaders, who sincerely want to help develop the floundering economic climate in the Milwaukee area.  I’m not trying to take anything away from their goals to bring new businesses to Milwaukee, however, I’m not convinced that this “free water” deal would be a sound, sustainable, long-term solution. 

I’m a member of the Milwaukee 7 Water Council – World Water Hub group and I am passionate about Water.  Working with other individuals, businesses and organizations to keep water plentiful, available, clean and healthy for all of us –  everywhere, not just in Milwaukee, or the “dryer” states in the US, but for everyone in every state, country and continent is an important goal of mine.  To that end, I would not feel that I was acting as a responsible caretaker of our water supply if it were used as a ”free gift” for businesses to move to our area.

When considering this idea further, here are some other thoughts I had:  

What kinds of businesses would/could be lured to Milwaukee by the promise of free water?  If I owned a company that used lots and lots of water, I would accept that offer and move my business here.

Has criteria been set for capacities, cleanliness standards, or the maximum number of companies that Milwaukee could afford to give free water, etc? 

 What if Wisconsin is pulled into the national issue of sending water to Western or Southern states? 

In an article in Salon.com, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico  ”…had his region’s plight in mind when he told the Las Vegas Sun that Northern states need to start sharing their water: ‘I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water.’”

 It’s my opinion that Milwaukee’s treasure of “BLUE GOLD” should be carefully watched over by conservative stewardship. I don’t believe it should be given away “free” to lure businesses to the area, or sent via pipeline to drier states. If a business can no longer be sustainable in a dry climate, then the company owner/s should learn more responsible business practices and move the business to the appropriate climate. If that happens to be Milwaukee, then they should pay for their water the same way I pay for it – quarterly! 

I applaud our business leaders for looking for innovative ideas to help the Milwaukee econonomy, but isn’t just advertising the idea that our region does have plentiful water for their businesses a good enough reason to lure them here? 

For further reading on this topic:

Business Pulse: Tap jobs with free water – The Business Journal of Milwaukee:.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/07/water_problems/index.html

Welcome back to our third, and quite possibly, last installment in the Emmy-award winning instructional series, the Fancy Plans Guide to Childbirth. If you would like to catch up with the rest of the class, please click the following links:
Part I
Part II

This edition will deal with the decisions following the delivery (or as we call it, “afterbirth”). Please bear in mind that most of these decisions will have multiple choices, meaning there is no wrong way to proceed.*

*Except for the “do not do’s” listed below. Do not do those.

Young Starshine Freelove Wilson began to regret ever being born.

Post-Delivery Plans
Now that all the screaming and bloodletting is over, it’s time to celebrate your ability to create life through the magical act of “getting some.”

As your partner heads back to her area for some much-needed drugs and reconstructive surgery, feel free to take a victory lap around your Contact list, letting all your friends and relatives in on the vital statistics:

• Sex (“It’s a boy!“)
• Weight (“Less than infinity.”)
• Length (“Well, keep in mind that he’s less than 4 hours old and the room was a little cold, but I’d say a little under an inch.”)
• Birth Time (“Shortly after my explanation about the “thing” I had with her sister. Well, half-sister, if you want to get technical.”)
• Visiting Hours (“I’m sure she’d be happy to see you any time! You say you’re in the lobby? Come on up! She should be back from her crotch-stitching any minute now.”)

Or you can skip the procedure, in which case your child will be ambushed by the physician sometime in his mid-30's.

Circumcision
This used to be an easy decision (“Of course!”) but recently there has been somewhat of a backlash against it.

Simple rule of thumb: make your kid’s package look like yours. In addition to it being somewhat of a bizarre bonding thing, it will also help you avoid awkward conversations with your unsnipped son in the future.

Son: “Dad, why does your [insert stupid 'penis' replacement word here] look different than mine?
You: “Good question. You see, my parents were raised in a different era and they made a decision based on an outmoded set of morals…”
Son: “Oh. Are you talking about why they decided not to abort you?”
You: “I think you’re spending too much time with your mom.”

You say this book only contains the "best" baby names? I'll take two!

Choosing a Name
As the proud owner of a brand new child (with that awesome “new child smell”), you will be tempted to saddle your offspring with an imaginative name currently in use by no one else. The potent combination of anxiety and sleeplessness will play tricks on your fragile mind, raising the possibility of cursing your child with a lifetime of humiliation (“Chad Kroeger, Jr.”) or an early death (“River Phoenix,” “Jet Travolta”).

Stick with the classics like Justin or Michael. For the girls, try Jennifer or Jessica. These are great, nearly-Biblical names that have never been associated with skanky, marginal or vapid celebrities.

Some more examples:

• Gallant – Yes; Goofus – No
• Jermaine – Yes; Tito – No
• Jessica – Yes; Ashlee – No
• Billy Ray – No; Miley – No
• George Michael – Yes; Andrew Ridgely – No
• Rozz – Yes; Valor – No
• Uma – Yes; Oprah – No
• Sunny – No; Cher – No; Chastity – No
• Philip – Yes; Yancy – No
• Fresca – Yes; Tab – No
• Jif - Yes; Nutella – No

Heavy-handed metaphors exceeding 24 tons exit here.

The Future
Once you have your new arrival home with you, it’s time to start mapping out his life, starting with learning to read in multiple languages by age 3 and culminating in his Master’s degree from Harvard 20 years down the road, at which point you’ll be able to live off his earnings as a groundbreaking inventor/#1 draft pick.

You both will pick out hereditary traits you wish to encourage:

You:
Keep – Famous wit; full head of hair
Toss – Lack of self-motivation; blogger’s insecurity

Her:
Keep – Your full head of hair
Toss - Everything else, starting with that “famous wit”

You can also speculate on some “fallback” options for your pressured child, in case you have set the bar too high.* Some other acceptable choices are fireman, cowboy, homosexual, philosophy professor, protestor-for-hire, SAG member, hitman, psychic friend.

* As if.

Then sit back and watch reality set in as you come to the realization that the TV is doing a better job raising your child than you ever did while trying to keep the saving account/bail fund full of emergency cash.

-CLT

spent about three hours working on the little packet my counseler gave me last night. no idea why I have to do this much work so he’ll write me one letter. and after my mom’s comment about how worrying about that right now was useless because I haven’t taken my sats yet, I have something new to worry about.

sats, man. those things aren’t easy. at least, they weren’t in seventh grade. and I thought the psat was sort of hard when I took it. what scores is the school even looking for? what scores will I be able to get them? and how important are sats anyway? because I am a ninth grader and shouldn’t even be thinking about college yet, I do not know. and it’s stressing me out.

I guess I’ll do some more review tonight, and tomorrow. my test is on the first saturday of december, which I think is the fifth.

currently listening – I love you so much, it’s killing us both - jawbreaker.

I have been debating the value of going to the criminal bar in Legalweek. I am occasionally said to be too gloomy. But it’s not as bad as Alex says. This is still a job worth doing

In my last post I talked briefly about Search and Economics. Today, I read a really interesting post from Alan Mitchell which, whilst saving me a write up, explains how this fits into PPC pricing models.

The article explains how a ‘tipping point’ can be reached between click volume and client profit. There is no perfect pricing model for PPC, every model is different. CPA and Revenue share models both have specific pros and cons. The point to bear in mind is balancing risk and profit. This means clients and agencies need to work very closely to ensure a pricing model suits ALL objectives (strategic, marketing, profit, and volume) from a client and agency viewpoint.

“In short, the percentage of spend model is a highly inefficient pricing model for paid search management, and should be avoided. As pointed out by George Michie in his recent post on SEM Pricing Models, since the agency receives a commission on every dollar spent, there is an incentive for the agency to spend as much as possible, which can be far in excess of the point of diminishing marginal returns.”

I think that going forward ‘creativity’ on pricing is needed. As the market develops, clients become more savvy and commercially driven, some clients have some search disciplines in-house then ppc pricing elements will need to be based on a mixture of; time spent on specific search disciplines, fixed retainers, and (in some cases) hybrid revenue share models. Many agencies tend to try and place a set pricing model on clients without really understanding the client’s objectives and marginal profit margins. That’s a No No, Win Lose. If you can spend a little more time on pricing, working with the client, it is possible to find a win win.

Next post – I will aim to tackle Economics and Social Media.

Based on the fact the economists believe consumers ‘act rationally’, this may be interesting.

Thanks to all the Independents, announced and yet to be announced.  The following from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet sums up for Mosey and I how we feel about you all:

Then said the rich man, Speak to us of Giving.

And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have — and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

There are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

HEY THERE!

Are you insane?

Do you like girls?

Yes??  Well, you’re in luck.  Have I got a bat-shit crazy pinup for YOU!

Traveled to the future and brought back the future phone

This blog is funded by bets made from the future and placed in the past. Small investments can be sent in the present for your future prosperity. It’s a pretty much for sure thing.

Jayj

is over.

Almost a graduate.

One step closer. To the next phase of my life.

So much uncertainty.

Soon I shall embark on another Journey. It’s terrifying.

I’m not looking forward to it at all. This past one was a good one. I don’t want to move on.

But then, do I have a choice? Why can’t we stagnate a little longer?

“ The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were last February.”

Donald Miller, A Million Miles In Ten Thousand Year

Howdy folks.  While still a work in progress, I have moved this blog from the convenient and free WordPress.com site to a more expensive and cumbersome site.  You can find all of my updated picture stories by traveling through this link:

http://wolsamnoraa.com/

I appreciate your time and your support.  If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, feel free to suck on my balls.  Once again, thanks for that.

“Joshua” is a melodious name; a strong name; a name that in all forms—in its entirety and in abridgements—does not suggest, imply, echo, or rhyme with any colloquial or clinical term for genitalia.  The name’s resultant popularity is evident.  In 2008 alone, 18,924 boys were christened “Joshua.”  In comparison, 22,272 boys were named “Michael”—the year’s most popular name—but only 196 babies were dubbed “Cornelius” (rank: 998th most popular).

Though zero American presidents and only 41 NFL players have borne the name, “Joshua” appears unstoppable.  In the 120 years that the Social Security Administration has tracked the names of infants, “Joshua” has never fallen below the rank of 729th most popular name.  This historic low occurred in 1929, a year in which the otherwise-preoccupied nation fell back on old stand-bys like “John” (4.7033% of births) and lazy descriptors (“Guy”; 0.0740%).  There are “Joshua” trees (Yucca brevifolia), a Dolly Parton album named “Joshua” (RCA, 1971), and even a “Joshua,” Texas (population: 5,574).  “Joshuas” have been Nobel Prize laureates, as well as honorees in People magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” competition.  Jesus of Nazareth himself was a “Joshua”—“Jesus” being a transliteration of the Greek, from the Hebrew “Yehoshua.”  Since 1953 the popularity of “Joshua” as a boy’s name has increased exponentially; by mathematical extrapolation, in the year 2547, 78.255% of the male population of the United States will be named “Joshua.”

Perhaps, millennia hence, when every baby, publication, and artificial intelligence created is named “Joshua,” our civilization will gradually forget all other words.  “Joshua” will become our entire vocabulary: both noun and verb, article and preposition, adjective and adverb.  “Joshua” will be the woman we love, the hovercraft we fly to work, and the loneliness we feel, late at night, surrounded by insensate holograms.  We will turn to one another and say, arms outstretched, “Joshua joshuas joshuaed? Joshua?  Joshua.”

-Sara Joy Culver

Something that’s been knocking around in my head since I decided to go back to uni is the question of why. Not why go back to uni (that’s easy enough: I’m Very Bored in my current job, and I miss learning and researching and being… creative, I guess. Yes, that thesis was creative). Not even why on earth do I want to be an academic, because that turns out to be quite obvious, after a year away (h/t to Dean Dad, who once posted suggesting that it would be a good idea for aspiring academics to try their hands at something else, in the interests of a more rounded skill-set and the definite knowledge that this is what one wants to do, rather than the only thing one thinks one can do).  The amount of time I spend lecturing long-suffering friends on such things as sexuality in medieval hagiography, or the life of Charlemagne, or dirty jokes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when I really should be taking a chill pill and enjoying Real Life has lead me to the conclusion that I’d enjoy teaching as much as research.

No. What I’m coming back to (again) is: why medieval studies? I mean, really. WHY?

Simple answer is because I happen to LIKE it. There’s also the fact that I can pick up and run with Old French, I could go back to Middle English or Old English, and I know the ins and outs of how to go about the research, and find the key texts and consult the primary sources and cross-reference to other things I’ve studied. But mostly, it’s that I like medieval studies. I like medieval texts and I like medieval social constructs. I like hanging out with the Gawain poet and Chrétien and Ælfric and knowing how they thought and wrote and dreamed. Also I like knowing obscure things like the length of a cubit for the purposes of Venetian ship-builders in the Crusade period (84cm, as it happens) and baffling poor innocent people who didn’t actually care in the first place.

But that only really answers why I want to research in this field (if it even answers that much. I could, theoretically, live a perfectly productive life doing whatever it is that productive people do, and read Chrétien for fun). It doesn’t answer such questions as “why invest a lot of government money in allowing me to do this” or “why subject undergrads to Obscure Things Highly Finds Interesting?” And it really doesn’t answer the question of “isn’t there something more relevant and useful a young female australian with a yen for literary theory could be doing with her time?” Australian lit is not very widely studied. Australian women’s lit, even less so. Early Australian women’s lit: very sparsely indeed. I happen to know of a woman who wrote – not brilliant, but interesting – social novels about late 19th/early 20th century Australian society.  She had some very interesting connections with Federation-era feminist circles and the movement for women’s tertiary education. As far as I know, she’s never been studied.

Am I suffering from a classic case of Cultural Cringe? Isn’t it a bit sad, if some (most?) of the smartest young humanities scholars in the country (not that I’m necessarily the smartest of young scholars. But I’m pretty smart, and very stubborn) are busy running off with their heads in the literature and history and social constructs of countries and time periods removed from our own by half a globe and at least half a millenium?

A friend and mentor justified, in her Aus. govt. research funding application, her intention to study medieval marriage, as being relevant to Australia’s scholarly interests because this country has inherited the institutions and cultural understandings of British society, and therefore her research into the politics of marriage in her particular medieval period would or could contribute to the contemporary debate about the institution of marriage and its place in Australian society. As it happens, I buy this argument (if I had a dollar for every time I’ve brought up the twelfth-century origins of the sacrament of marriage in a debate about the Sanctity of Marriage, I’d be making a substantial contribution to the marriage equality campaign, in the name of good history). But where does “understanding shared cultural constructs” cross over into Culture Cringe?  Can I justify the study of female friendship in the works of Chrétien de Troyes in terms of potential insights into my own culture and context, and should I? How do you reconcile the need to bypass the cultural privilege given to European history with the principle of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”?

I was tidying up my RSS feed today – removing blogs I never read anymore, and adding, as it happens, some Australian feminist bloggers. And I came across this post at Modern Medieval, in which Matthew Gabrielle quotes an email from a former student of his, on how the study of history changed the way that said student understands his own context.

I was led to these necessary conclusions. If I could, at the same time, be critical of and appreciate St. Francis of Assisi, why couldn’t I also question while appreciating the Founding Fathers or Abraham Lincoln? If describing the Crusades as a struggle between the evil Christian invaders and the Muslims was an over-generalization, why must I accept the generalizations we make about terrorism, politicians, or religious leaders? People are people. Mass movements are mass movements. Heroes and great nations make mistakes and bad guys and rogue nations aren’t often as evil as we’d like them to be. To be sure, I studied the Middle Ages at a time when I was already questioning many of my assumptions and, already, becoming the black sheep of my family, but the study of history, and specifically of this period, further freed my thoughts to allow for complexity so that I can disagree with Bush without thinking him ill-intentioned. So that I could condemn terrorists without condemning fundamental Islam. For me, the Middle Ages weren’t as important for how they still affect the present as they were for how they allowed me to examine the present for what it truly is—a world as complex as the Middle Ages.

Medieval Studies taught me that gender is a social construct. I’ve still never read a word of Judith Butler; I’m only just now reading Ann Summer’s Damned Whores and God’s Police, which goes through, in great detail, the history of women’s gendered experience in Australia. I ran a mile from feminist theory, in my early undergrad years. But I kept coming back to studying women, because women and women’s place in society and how people think about women and women’s place in society interests me. Ælfric, bless his cotton socks, and the scholars who work on him, taught me about signifiers of gender, and passive/active dichotomies. It wasn’t until I won a prize from the Society for Medieval Feminist Studies for what I thought was an eminently sensible essay about grammar and narrative structure in Ælfric’s Judith, which just so happened to be looking at gender, that I realised I’d accidentally become a feminist scholar. It took another… six months, at least, before I cottoned on that I’d also accidentally become a feminist, after swearing myself blue in the face for years that I was and would always remain an egalitarian, and wasn’t having a bar of that crazy feminism business.

University taught me to think critically about things I’d always taken for granted. Medieval Studies taught me first to think critically about things far enough removed from my own context that I couldn’t take them for granted. And then, as Matthew’s former student says, it’s a lot easier to turn those same critical lenses on the context I live in now.

I’m still not sure that I’m not suffering from Culture Cringe. But I can say that it’s worth Australian time and money researching the distant past (the distant European past. The distant Asian past. The distant American past and Indian past and South American past and African past, and absolutely the distant Indigenous past), even in the absence of any immediate and clear connection to any present political or cultural debate. And it is always worth Australian time and money teaching people to think about the distant past: because it’s FUN. And because once you start thinking, it becomes very hard to stop.

Science fiction and technology. In the future, every invention ever seen in science fiction will exist.  They’re already working on it.

Obama is pushing for science and video games. Its about time.

Medical Marijuana for kids! Joey Perez was a danger to himself and others.

Here’s 2009 precictions for 2010.

Here’s 2008’s predictions for 2009.

Here’s 2007’s predictions for 2008.

And here’s some past predictions. 

And here’s some more past predictions.

Any conclusions on what was predicted, and what is actually happening?

I’m going to forget everything that has happened in the past.
I’m moving foward.

PS: I kind of miss Australia…

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Quote by: Eleanor Roosevelt

Must buy legos for…educational, architectural needs. And world domination.