Holy Marketing, Batman

I used to market my blog.

(Sort of.)

I was a member of 20 Something Bloggers, back when I somehow found the time and strength to be both a twenty-something and, simultaneously, a blogger. However did I do it all, and still find time to look this awful?

Well, those days are over now-- at least, the twenty-something days are-- and I no longer market my blog. I no longer mingle (and I certainly don't co-mingle) with other bloggers out there in Akron or Auckland and I don't receive any funny little "Blogging Awards" from well-meaning twenty-three-year-olds who are probably too attractive to ever associate with me in person, and I don't get mentioned in other blogs very much anymore, and I don't cross-promote either.

Not that I ever really did that very much to begin with, but I admit, there was a little span of time there where I was convinced that some light-to-moderate cyber-whoring was good for a lad.

My wife sometimes chides me for having almost an antisocial antipathy for any opportunity this blog could possibly have to make me (us) money. And why is that? Am I too good to charge for a peek under the apron? Or do I lack the self-confidence to try to make this any bigger than it is (which isn't very big, yeah, she said that. Hilarious.) because I have basically no spine?

I don't know. Maybe I'll ask my PsyD guy what he thinks. I know it's supposed to be the other way 'round, but a lot of things are supposed to be.

I believe in marketing, of course, I'm just not sure I believe in marketing... me, which is, basically, what this blog is. I mean, it's not really me-- it's pieces of me, just like the film "Pieces of April" wasn't April-- it was pieces of April.

Kaite Holmes was in that. She's hot. Oliver Platt was in that, too. He's funny. He was even funny in "Frost/Nixon." I want to be in movies. And in Katie Holmes. Truthfully, though, were I given the choice to be in either, I'd choose to be in movies.

But... back to marketing.

I would never want to be in marketing. I was in retail for a little while, and that was bad enough, and I was pretty bad at being in retail. Retail involves, I believe, trust on two levels. One, the customer has to implicitly trust you, the retailer. I had no problem with this area, people implicitly trust me all the time. I don't know why-- I think it's the way I furrow my brow and turn the corners of my mouth down. The other piece of the trust-burger is that you have to trust yourself that you can sell shit you don't believe in, and not just sell it, but sell it for an unbelievable mark-up. That was where I often faltered. When I presented a pair of glasses to a customer and told them that their bill was something like a thousand dollars, I would wither and wilt like a month-old tulip.

Pathetic.

I've been thinking a lot about marketing recently. I listen to news on the radio a lot, and it seems like the Catholic Church could use some marketing assistance, from someone a lot more capable than I. Parishes are dwindling and drying up left and right, once-faithful parents all-of-a-sudden don't want priests molesting their male children anymore, and every school year it seems that more and more Catholic schools are closing their doors.

I mean, as far as the schools closing, it's obvious why. Who the fuck gets all excited about enrolling at Pope Octavius Nostradamus Pius XVII? Who wants to tell their normal friends that they attend school at the Holy Blessed Mother of the Virginal Catechism or the Lamb of God's Assumption Narthex Preschool?

I mean-- Jesus. That fucking blows.

I think, if we had some marketing experts with some actual creativity and balls that we'd come up with a plan to save our nation's Catholic schools. I mean, look around you. Look at the success of "Spiderman" on Broadway. Why the hell not capitalize on that? Can you positively imagine what enrollment would be like at "Holy Spiderman School"? You'd have kids thinking that they're going to walk on walls and ceiling and shit. Just drop a nun or a priest from the third floor every couple months, and that'll keep 'em coming back.

How about "Sister Laura Croft Middle School" as a boy's 6-8th grade school? Every class would be 100% filled, every year, without question.

Marketing isn't hard, it just takes people who aren't too lazy and complacent and proud to do it. Come on, Catholic Church. You can do this. Use your Spidey-Sense. Channel the energy in Laura Croft's fantastic tits.

Sell. Sell. Sell.