Face The Challenge, Feel Twitter-pated

My wife has challenged me to not logon to FaceBook for one week, unless it is career-related, in pertaining to Comedy. This isn't that different than being asked to abstain from drinking unless it is a therapeutic dose. I'm accepting the challenge!

Starting Wednesday, January 6, 2009, I will stay off of FaceBook for ONE WEEK, 7 Calendar Days. In the meantime, if you have to get a hold of me, here's how:

1. Email. You can find this easily enough at my sadly decrepit website (my fault, not Blaine's).
2. Phone. When you need me for a gig, call me. Talk to me. Text is okay, if you're a half-assed, dead-eyed, free-drinking "booker"/ex-comic with a huge blindspot to your own life who likes to book shows 4 hours before they start, 75 miles away. Not that Douglas James is reading this (no computer). Or if you want to show me your new butt tatt.
   
3. House Call. If you don't know where I live, you didn't see any of the 308 postings for the condo we have returned to in Kirkland. Come on by and see me grinding me incisors down while trying to figure out the difference between the News and Live Feeds.

The upside is that I won't have to face a single application request from anybody. I feel like people are asking me to see their band at the Elks Lodge next week. Best of luck, but I'm not allowed in Kittitas County until May, 2011.

But I'll blog, and that will update my FaceBook status.
No TWITTER, either. Not that anybody was following me...

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Be Your Own, Anonymous Person

Sure as I am that many articles, blogs, and pr0n-spam links have been made about this, I would like to weigh-in on an issue that affects us all when it comes to the use of the Internet.

Our Constitution (for Americans only, I hope) has a number of Amendments, which is to say, the first go-round didn't quite get it all. One of those Amendments is the First one. Luckily, it's the most important one in a society full of people who our Forefathers thought would be smarter than they are. It guarantees our Freedom to Speak, Print, and Worship. Not sure how those all tie in to each other, but ink was pricey then and if you can't tell somebody to read the Bible, what's the use of stealing one from a Hotel?

So we've got this far now into the Web2.0 thing, wherein WE are the contributors of content. This blog, that goat-fighting video, keyboard cat, CHICKEN TETRAZZIIIINI, and your video that nobody was supposed to see.

Oh... who's a pretty little Thai Schoolgirl NOW?

And in the Cyberscape we can often become anybody we want to, and live anonymously, vicariously, and usually, slovenly. And we contribute what it is we (think?) the world wants to hear from us. Or, more narcisistically, what WE want the world to know about us. These plops fall into 5 categories:

1) Boring
2) Pointless
3) Profane
4) A link to some sort of hole
5) Something enraging the easily-enraged shut-in

So yeah, the 'nets full of nobodies. If I were really poppin', I wouldn't be cheek-liftin' blogs out this monster for nobody. Love for my readers, always always. But hey, if I had my druthers, I'd be inaccessible 40 weeks a year. Until then, send me a drink in MafiaWars. Nobody talks anymore...

To prove it, here's a cam pic of me writing this blog.

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Beggars Can't Be Choosers

FaceBook, Twitter, Blogs, MySpace, and the Taylor Swift FanFiction Forum... all of these are places for you to hang it out there. Call it "Social Networking." Call it "Vanity Web." Call it "Time Wasted." It's a self-paparazz'ing to show off what you gots to show... and it turns many of us into gawking lurkers from the privacy of our Snuggie.

You only have to give as much as you choose on these sites. You need not say everything. Better for you that you don't, unless you're trying to "create a buzz." At that point, fire away.

But do not say you're not going to be on FaceBook for a week while recovering from surgery, and then NOT tell everyone what you're going to have cut off and replaced with Stretch Armstrong doll. You can't ask for attention and then gripe about the kind of attention you get.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GLRules !

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Nice Twits

TWITTER, the mini-blog of the Now, is a new format I hit up to "Tweet." Just random thoughts in moments.
For example:
"Big diff btwn "quitting job to follow Purpose" and "didn't show up for shift, got high and did open mics instead."

"Demanding u finish "GhostBusters 2" is a mandate of solo TV watching, so stop talking to me through the wall"

"You want fully organic, probably best to grow your own"

"50% of the people at Health Food Stores appear severely malnourished"


So if you're out there, check it out, Follow me on Twitter!

And FaceBook!

AAAAAAAND!
New Video This week! Banks, credit crunch, customer service,

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Your Dirty Windows

The on-set of FaceBook, MySpace, SpaceBalls, BallBook, MyFaceOnBalls, BallFace, BallSpace, and CuteOverload.org all funnels into the same market of the 'net now known as "Social Media." We decide, choose, and connect how we wanna connect. You can't force somebody to be your friend on the 'net. There's no booze, no coke, no lingering feelings of parental neglect. No immediate pay-off to a relationship. So superficial. So 2009.

I wanna be your on-line friend, so I can stalk you from afar, and you can see how fat I got after Senior Year. Which, if I had to do over again, I would skip WAY more often. The schooling, not the fatness. Wow. My kids are skipping whether they like it or not. I'll force my kids to skip HOME Schooling and go hang at the local alternative high for crap's sake. FOR CRAP'S SAKE, MARC, YER TAKIN' THE PISS! Now, as people carry on posting pictures of their lives, we get a peek into what's important to them. And it varies up the scale of age.

Family and Married People post pics of their kids. If I want somebody to see my kids, I'll hold my kid over the balcony, thank you. But DAMN, my family and friends put out some really cute kids (NIECES PIECES RILEY!). Okay, fine. Now the "internet public is clamoring for more of the Obama's Daughters!" Bigger than Miley Cyrus!?!?! Not at WalMart! Not yet...

Single people post pictures of places they got drunk, taken while they were drunk in those places. Bathing suits on the hotties. Self-pics. Double-fisting (that oughtta get some hits). LOTS of hugs.

Anybody still in high school, emotionally anyway, posts pics they take of theyselves and they friends and they partying in a car, throwin' finger signs and being awesome. What-what? No. No.

So, now that we have a billboard unto the world to tell 'em all what we're about? We have unparalleled access and capability to say "CHECK ME OUT." And while people become their own paparazzi, I'm just not seeing much that's exciting enough to tune back in for. And THAT banality is exactly what is so intriguing!

Please, keep doing what you're doing, and posting the photographic evidence of your life. Someday, we'll look back and remember how great you could have been, until you came down with autophotoluciopia... Blindness caused by taking pictures of yourself because you don't have any actual friends to snap one for you, fart-saver.


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2008 - The Year It Began To Start To Get Different Again

What a Year. 2008, wow. Everything changed this year. I've recapped a lot throughout this blog, so I'm not gonna try and get every little detail, but I'll hit some high-points and see who gets upset over things that were intended to be offensive and came across as "funny."

1. BLACK PRESIDENT! There ya go. We have a fantastic President Elect in Barack Obama. I don't really care about the color of his skin as much as the content of his cabinet. The state of this nation - greed-fisted into a shame spiral and geographically and emotionally entrenched in two foreign occupations via military - can be rejuvenated. Obama's the man to lead us. But seriously, a national income tax, on top of taxes for homes, property, goods, services, and food? Fist that. What a fistful of hate-farts.
   
2. DREAM-MAKING! Whenever somebody I meet in the comedy world states "I quit my job to do comedy," I ask them what they did for a living. They say "Oh, I was answering phones at this company..." or "I was a manager at a shoe store" or some-such. THAT is not job-quitting. That is "I didn't show up for my shift so I could stay up later and smoke/drink/try-for-more-ass." I quit a career in IT where I was making phat money, because my heart was elsewhere. I listen(ed) to the voice in my heart/gut that said "Go, I'll take care of you," and my wife totally called my bluff. Just tell folks you're out there making your dream happen; don't marginalize your run-up to it by inching around the fact you were no good on the grill. The Grill will be waiting.
   
3. Gerry Lott (1943-2008)! My dear dad, Gerry Lott, passed away on November 16th. He had battled Dementia and all that it did to him for about 5 years, that we know of. The years prior to that, however, were lived the way that culminated in the type of memories and sentiments most people would choose to have spoken of them. How? Because my dad loved Life. He embraced the struggle of being Human, in that we all shared it, and in that he found compassion for others. He encouraged, cared, befriended, hugged, loved, laughed, danced, sang, joked, taught, learned, cried, and Had Faith in every bit of it. It's not easy. But he did it right. I have missed him for years. I will love him always. And I only slotted him at #3 because of his modesty.
4. UW GOES WINLESS! The winless, 12-loss, ironically-named Tye Willingham uncoached my alma mater through 12 games without a win. Being a stoic, fridgid, unable to win a football game-like coach doesn't help a damn thing when you start throwing 19 year-old players under the bus. When they all make the same mistakes, that is a COACHING error. We get a new coaching staff, a new lease on football life, and hopefully a 6-win, low-tier bowl next year. If we do, you read it here first, I will get a "W" tattoo on my body somewhere.
   
5. WEIGHTGAIN! Son of a ... after getting down around 223 earlier this year, I'm again in the high 230s, thanks to the last 6 weeks of my life. Between my dad's services and 10 days in Las Vegas and the Holidays, I gots work to do. I now believe that most of the "diets" pushed by a lot of the men's fitness mags are there to keep weight on you, and buying their magazine. If you don't believe me, try the "PeanutButter FudgeSteak" diet and see for your fat self.
6. Mixed Martial Arts! Most of us know this as the UFC. There are organizations world-wide, however, many of them better than UFC. Most of the fighters are college-educated athletes with backgrounds in wrestling, Muay Thai kickboxing, and minor buffoonery. It's taken off to a new level this year, and with any luck, will cause numerous meat-heads to punch each other in the face while waiting in line for the bathroom at a bar.
   
7. FACEBOOK! It has surpassed MySplorch in terms of usability and intelligent networking, but not for self-promotion... yet.
   
8. GREED! Who didn't get this ass-chomp of a reality check this year? Car makers, home-owners who didn't handle their finances, banks going in the shit-chewer, politicians being voted out, Big Oil, Governor Blabonovich, EVERYBODY who went for the Bad Green got face-corned this year. I love it. It will turn around soon. But that was the shakedown, so I hope we are all paying attention.

Go get yours.

Happy New Year!
There's mass more but I have to go now.

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