Monetize Me, Batman

There's some funny little buttons on top of my Blogger template.

Posting

Comments

Settings

Design

Monetize

Stats

Clearly, I haven't done much the "Design" button, as the "design" of this blog, if you can call it that, (hence the quotes), has remained relatively unchanged for the entirety of my 674 posts hereupon. That is largely by, ahem, design. I don't put much stock into tinkering with things, or prettying them up. I'm under no delusion that this blog isn't, well, a guy's blog and, therefore, will remain unadorned with and unencumbered by pesky things like aesthetics or, you know, class.

The stats button I look at regularly. I obsess over who's reading this blog, who isn't, how frequently people come back here, what posts are attracting the most attention, and where people live who read this cockshit. Those of you who use Google Reader obfuscate and confuse my stat tracker, damn you, as it doesn't pick you up. What the hell is wrong with you people? Who do you think you are-- fuckin' Batman or something?

The one button or tab or whatever the hell it is that I've never pushed, never really even thought about, is the one that says "Monetize."

The idea that "My Masonic Apron" could somehow make me money, even the equivalent of two buffalo nickels, is enough to make me, well, smile. It's funny. It's difficult to believe. It's counter to pretty much everything I believe in. In fact, I have politely rebuffed two individuals who attempted to compensate me in some way for either reviewing/pushing a book on this site, or reviewing/pushing a product on my blogdience.

For those of you who don't believe that I am capable of politely rebuffing somebody-- I really was nice. I promise. I even turned it around on myself.

"I believe you may have grossly overestimated my influence," I wrote to one of them. Because, really, I believe that they did.

Grossly.

Some people who are far savvier and cleverer than I are making their blogs work for them, and why shouldn't they? Blogging is hard work, I don't mind telling you. I mean, here I am, slaving away over these hot keys for you, to produce this... um.... product. This service. This infotainment. This blog equivalent of a trifle for you to serve to your cyberfriends.

(What?)

Seriously, though-- blogging is the easiest thing in the world-- and there's sizzling shitloads of donkheads who get paid for doing unbelievably easy crap. So, like, where's my fucking money, y'alls?

Like, monetize me, Batman.

I mean it. Send me money. A long time ago, I stopped blogging for, like, six weeks, and this other time a long time ago, I had this lameass existential crisis where I made vague threats that I was considering not blogging anymore, and you guys were all like, "No, don't," or something, and so I kept doing it, without any tangible, fungible, or negotiable reward whatsoever. Hell, most of you don't even comment anymore, so I don't even get the thrill of knowing that I'm making some kind of meaningful connection with the giddy, raven-tressed, pig-tailed, tank-top-wearing masses reading this tripe on cute white laptops on frilly pink bedspreads all across the world.

So, pay up.

I was thinking about putting a Paypal "Donate Now" button on the blog, but, gee, that's kind of like sitting outside a 7-Eleven, shitting in my pants and holding out a rusty, tin cup for drink-drink money, isn't it? I mean, I don't want to appear desperate or anything.

I just want to get all monetized or whatever.

Sure, you could donate to the "Julian Assange Defense League", or to the "Save the Welsh Corgis from Families Who Live in Scarsdale Foundation", or to the "Extradite Rachael Ray to the Golan Heights Fund" or to "Habitat for Profanity," but why would you rescue Greyhounds or honor Bluebloods or support Redbirds when you could just as easily put a few more in the pockets of a true, genuine, American antihero: Mr. Apron?

Give. It's as easy as taking off a tank-top.

Does This Blog Make My Ass Look Big?

Ever feel... insecure?

Uncertain?

...............................................

Not-so-fresh?

Of course you do-- you're bloggers, and most of you are female. So feeling insecure and not-so-fresh is practically your business, for Christ's sake. You're constantly in a positively feral search for validation, comfort, rote flattery and cuddles if you can get them.

And I don't blame you. I likes me that shit, too.

(Espech the cuddles. Totes and natch.)

It's funny-- if you ever take the time to look back and reflect on why you started blogging (just pretend you're being interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, alone in your room, like I used to do when I was twelve) you might be surprised by what your motives were back then, if you can remember back that far because of all those drugs you did to get you through your early twenties.

I remember vividly why I started my old blog. I did it as a kneejerk response to the anger and rage I felt against the exclusive girls Catholic school I subbed at for a month whose Lord High Penguin found "something on my Google" that contained obscenities and ordered me (on my last day of scheduled teaching) not to return to campus.

"Fuck that cunt," I said to my wife after I had recovered from the shock of my first official dismissal, and after doing, if you'll pardon my self-aggrandizement, a wonderful job with my students, "I'm not changing who I am for anybody-- I'm just going to be anonymous about it."

Aaaaand that's what I did, and that's why I did it.

I didn't know anything about blogging when I started and, two-ish years later, I still don't. Well, I know there are rules and etiquette, about commenting and responding to comments, and there are time-tested theories about cultivating followers and gaining recognition, promoting other bloggers, promoting yourself, scoring book deals, eschewing mediocrity, purchasing domain names and social networking.

But, really, I don't know anything. I just blog because it feels good.

But, is it the clickety clackety of the keyboard keys that feels good? Is it surfing through endless layers of pop culture and anti-pop culture and headlines and family minutae in search of a bloggable blogglette that feels good?

No.

It's the COMMENTS!

Because, in comments, there is validation. And cyber-cuddles. Get over here, Ms. Snuffleschmump! Gimme a squelch!

When I started blogging, I had no idea what comments were, and what their point was. Though my old blog is shut down and forever spirited away, I suspect that, if I were to raise it from the dead and check, it was probably, like, five months before I ever got my first comment. When I did, it was like Jesus rays streaming through the clouds of my mind. It was like when you shit so hard that you see Technicolor spots. It was like an angel tickling my asshole with a quail feather while singing like Eddi Reader.

I was like, "Oh."

Something clicked. And, at the same time, something snapped. This was what blogging was all about, I realized.

And, at the same time, I must have more of it.

Comments on my writing have always been, well, unsatisfying. I used to bang out questionable stories, poems, and sketches on typewriters, word processors and, eventually, computers upstairs in the play room and I would come downstairs all triumphant with my six or seven pages of profanity-laced material about men in suits behaving in bizarre ways, and I would read the material to my parents, seated dutifully in the living room.

"That's very nice," was my mother's stock reply. My father, generally speaking, needed a second or third reading to prompt any response, being Israeli and all.

I routinely fell in love with English teachers and, later, professors. Not in the I-wanna-prematurely-ejaculate-all-over-your-back way (I only wanted to do that to my 11th grade math teacher) but in the I-want-you-to-love-and-respect-me-and-admire-my-talents way. See, I have this thing for intelligent authority figures, of whatever gender-- doesn't matter. I crave their recognition and their adulation, and I began to realize, slowly-- very slowly-- that the reason I wrote creatively was exclusively for the reaction from these individuals. I craved their intelligent, witty, and supportive comments.

When my creative writing seminar professor in college called me a genius, I was seized by an unshakeable desire to legally adopt her daughter.

And now, here I am, bereft of my coveted intellectual authority figures, but still doing the same damn fool old thing-- writing for, well, I suppose it's love. What kind? Well, I don't know. The "That's nice" comments from my mother are conspicuously absent from this blog because, well, I can't show it to her, even though she wouldn't be surprised by anything in it-- she would just be furious that it's out in public. And I doubt that any of my old professors and/or teachers read this blog, though that would make things very interesting.

You're here, of course. And that means a lot to me, as I think I've mentioned. I hope this doesn't give your weirdsies, or put you in the uncomfortable and regrettable position of feeling compelled to comment all or even some of the time, because you know that I'm sitting in my home office or my office office kneading my knuckles and turning my lips into that pathetic, pursed frown, hoping for a glimmer of validation. Because I wouldn't want you to say something nice, just because you think you should. I just want you to know why I blog, because I think that all of us should be asking ourselves that question, even if the answer is kind of odd, or kind of painful, or kind of absurd, or kind of cute.

You... do think I'm cute. Right?