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.

Swipe My Face!

My photograph is on my debit card.

Apparently, it makes it harder to steal my identity. I'm not convinced that this added layer of alleged security is worth the constant embarrassment of having to look at this grainy, unfortunate image of myself every time I pull the card out of my wallet.

There are people who enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror. I am not one of those people. I know people who weren't even awkward-looking in middle school. I still struggle with a chronic, potentially fatal case of the awks. I've considered placing the card in my wallet so that the back, with the signature line, faces me when I pull it out-- but I'm way too much of a creature of habit to do that. That would be almost as momentous a change for me as putting my keys in my right hip pocket as opposed to my left. I mean, come on. What is this-- Revolution?

They basically made me do it at the bank, when I made the mistake of complaining that my magnetic strip didn't always read when I was making debit purchases.

"Oh, we'll get you a new card-- and we're doing this cool thing with pictures of our customers on the cards now, for extra security. Can I take your picture, please? I need the practice-- I've only ever done one before you."

It shows. I wish I could blame the end result entirely on her ineptitude, but that wouldn't be fair. I think my parents each bear forty percent of the blame each-- we can lump the other fifteen percent on the dummy bank employee, and the remaining five on the tremendously out-dated, guinea pig-sized digital camera she was using to immortalize me in debittude.

Wait... that's a hundred percent, right? Eighty, plus-- nevermind.

I look scared. I always look scared when my picture is being taken for the purposes of photo I.D. badges, and I guess that this, in principle, is no different. It is some card-like-thing that you present to people to verify that you are who you claim to be. When I got hired for my job a an EMT lo those many fruitless years ago, I looked petrified, as if someone had just flashed me and, instead of a penis, there was a second set of teeth-- pointy ones. At the psych hospital, my I.D. badge is slightly less horrified, though it probably should have been moreso. Maybe I just didn't realize what I was getting into. After all, I had only spent a week there by the time the picture was taken, and I was doing orientation stuff, on the second floor, away from all the patients, in a room with one other employee and the attractive nurse educator. What was there to look scared of?

Ah, what indeed.

I've had my new debit card with my stupid picture on it for maybe two months. It hasn't changed anything. No vendor at the movie theatre or at the supermarket or the whatever place has scoped out the picture and checked it against my face to reassure him or her that I was not some black guy or Asian lady using my card. Nobody has even given the picture a second glance. The only person who knows it's there is me, and I'm not thrilled about it.

Actually, the short Chinese lady at the dry cleaner is, of course, the one exception to this rule. If there is anything in this world that she can do to make me feel awkward, anxious, and/or uncomfortable-- it will be more than her pleasure, it will be her done duty. I went there last week to pick up three of my wife's coats. As soon as I walked through the door, she started giggling. I looked down, instinctively, to see if my fly was down. It wasn't. I would love, by the way, to own a business, where I laughed in my customers' faces, for no apparent reason, and still demand that they give me significant quantities of money.

She went to the back of the store and brought out the coats.

"$51.23," she said. Now, of course, I didn't have that much cash on me. I never have cash on me. I am a pauper. If a mugger held me up at gunpoint, he would invariably look at the contents of my wallet and angrily shoot me in the face-- after laughing at the picture on my debit card, of course. Speaking of which, I reluctantly handed her my debit card. She took it, and stared at the picture, looking up at me, then looking back at the picture. She laughed again.

"So cute!" she exclaimed, sliding it through the processing machine.

"Yeah, I asked if they would put someone else's picture there, but they said, 'no.'" I joked. It was wasted on her. She looked at my name on the card and said,

"Jewishako?"

"What?"

"You-- Jewishako?"

At least, "Jewishako" is what I think she said. Even if it's not what she said, it's definitely what she was asking.

"Um, yes," I said, uncomfortably. It wasn't as uncomfortable as when a psych patient asks me if I'm Jewish, but the sensation inside me was similar.

"From Israel?" she pressed, handing me my receipt.

"Uh, no-- my father is from Israel."

"Oh! How funny!" she said, laughing.

Next time, I told myself, I will bring cash. Let her laugh at George Washington's fucking face.

Don't Rub Snake Oil on My Tits & Tell Me It's Funny.

Well, the welter-weight champion showdown of the world finally happened.

"Mad Money" host Jim Cramer vs. "Daily Show" host John Stewart: Fight of the TV Titans.

Cramer was clearly playing Defense as Stewart ripped into him for a variety of misdeeds. Stewart even had tape of Cramer, in younger, hairier days, talking about various and sundry shady dealings, footage which he gleefully rolled before Cramer, the live studio audience, and millions of viewers, viewers whom are now absolutely certain that "The Daily Show" is real news.

The logo behind John Stewart definitely said "Comedy Central" but, no matter how I searched for it, I couldn't find any comedy. Maybe it was hiding somewhere behind Stewart's Winnebago-sized ego. The interview was purported to be an opportunity for Jim Cramer to come on and explain why earlier "Daily Show" comments about him and his show were unfair, but it was really just a roast. And not a Friar's Club Roast, either. Those are funny. This wasn't.

I think the most telling moment of the confrontation came when John Stewart made the claim that, "we're both snakeoil salesmen to some extent, but we label our show as snakeoil. You don't."

Uh-oh! My Bullshit Meter just broke. John, could you get me a new one, please?

"The Daily Show" markets itself and is regarded by the 18-30 demographic overwhelmingly as anything but snakeoil, it is regarded as a legitimate alternative to network news programs, and not only does Stewart know it, he was behind the transformation-- and is profiting monstruously from it.

I thought "The Daily Show" was supposed to be funny, but I sure wasn't laughing at the Jim Cramer "interview." Has the writing staff of "The Daily Show" forgotten the definition for words like "satire" and "parody?" It's a fake news show. It's fake, people. Seriously. It's seriously fake-- at least, it's supposed to be. It was. What happened to the days of funny reporting? I can remember a great segment from the Craig Kilborn days when Beth Littleford interviewed a riverboat operator who was going to start charging obese patrons extra for wider seats. The reporting was a precise mimic of real newsreporter's dialects, intonations and facial expressions. What was not imitated, however, was content.

Littleford: "So, suppose... Chunky Mudflaps comes onto your ship and..."

See? Comedy.

Now, frankly, I think Jim Cramer and John Stewart are both idiots and assholes. If one's any better than the other in the integrity department, I'd be stunned. But for John Stewart to invite Jim Cramer on his show on the pretense of giving him a platform to explain and defend himself, and then simply unleashing a barrage of criticism and self-aggrandizing "I'm-with-the-people" rhetoric was an appalling and disgusting display.

Let me say this: there isn't a thing on television that isn't snakeoil. From the greasy-haired preachers to Ron Popeil shoving his flavor injector up turkeys' asses, to commercials for lawyers who only get paid if you win your case against the guy who made the paint chips your toddler ate to the commentators on Court TV-- everybody is full of fucking shit. Everybody. And I'll say this: if you make financial decisions because of something you heard on "Mad Money," then you're an idiot and an asshole, too. Here's another one, if your world view is shaped in any significant way by the stories and the jargon you see and hear on "The Daily Show," then double-dee-ditto on that score, too.

Shaming TV personalities on TV for being TV personalities is a shoddy game, especially when you're one yourself.