Public Speaking classes online. Please stop me...

Just had the either brilliant or utterly terrible idea of doing a series
of public-speaking classes as part of my "Grizzly's Growls" podcast. It's
either a very good idea -- I think I can teach what I do, whether that's
good or bad I dunno -- or a horrendously bad idea.

I really, really don't want it to turn out badly. But I think I can do
this. And I gotta do something that (a) interests a fairly large number
of people, and (b) has value and that I can do well. Far too many
screaming idiots online already.

Might even critique the poltical idiots (polidiots?) on how they do their
public speaking. Now THAT might be fun! Most of them are almost good at
it. Which means they have somebody write a good speech for them, then
don't know how to make it their own.

If this is a really idiotic idea, please stop me.

Thank you for your support. Don't Applaud, Throw Money!

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

The Old and the Dutiful

So, got a couple of emails indicating some comment-spammers were taking
advantage of a blog I used to run years ago, actually my first blog ever.

I hadn't ever figured out how to access that blog anymore. I hadn't used
it for so long, I'd forgotten my password and whatnot. I'd tried a few
times, but got stymied by the hassles of finding the stupid password.

Lately, things have become easier, and I was able to have Blogger email me
a link to let me activate the account and point it to my newer Google
stuff. So I got access to that aging and mostly empty blog (except for
the comment spam), and another I'd started shortly after. I deleted the
one I'd added, but I hate to lose my very first blog, so I kept it. The
blog address is <http://changelingturkey.blogspot.com>.

Not a damn thing in there. Created a Feedburner feed for it, and added a
few Feedburner-related features, just for S & G. I have no idea what to
do with one blog, much less two -- or three, if you count the one for the
podcast.

I may just let it sit. And I may open it up to the couple of folks who've
contacted me from the old Blackthorne Repertory Theatre group. They may
even recognize "Changeling Turkey," from one of our plays, I believe it
was "Kang Kong."

If youze guys are interested in a Blackthorne Repertory Theatre group
blog, I'll look forward to your reponses, and I'll set it up. Might as
well use it for something.

The last option

It just suddenly struck me that there's one option that I've failed to
provide on my podcast.

Please request your own copy of the book, "Grizzly's Growls, The Life and
Times of a Minor Local Celebrity," at your local bookstore.

You are certainly welcome to request a copy of the book, you're even
encouraged to request your own copy of the book, especially in hard cover,
since that's far, far more expensive.

But there isn't a book. Yet.

Still, if you wanna request a book, hey, no harm done, and maybe somebody
says, "Gee, there's no book, but there's all this demand. Maybe we should
get him to write a book?"

Gotta start somewhere, huh?

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

Better than Me

I'm way to old for this shit.

"You deserve much better than me."

Amen. Amen to that.

I really miss your hair in my face, and how your innocence tastes, and I
really think you should know this...

You deserve much better than me.

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

Re: About Your Post: Blackthorne Repertory Theatre, where are y'all?

Mike,

Did you ever get my previous reply?

Anyway, sorry I missed you in my rant. I'm getting old and gradually
losing my mind. What remains remembers you well.

Didn't we chat briefly on AIM or something? Can't recall.

Anyway, I didn't exactly forget you, just typed a brief post to my Blog
and hoped I'd rattled a few appropriate cages. Didn't recall how to spell
folks names, for one thing. What was Bill's name, for example, married
Patty, but I couldn't remember his name, and couldn't remember Patty's
maiden name. (And of course, I was more likely to recall the names of the
single females. Shame on me, I feel deeply sorrowful and whatnot.)

Anyway, thanks for the shout-out. Good to hear from you again, and glad
you're not currently in prison. Well, don't think you were in prison
before. Were you? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It was 12 Feb 2008, when m_z..... commented:

> Hmmmphhh...!!!! Forgetting a few people aren't you?
> Doing this from work, so I'm not real sure who You are (your info is
> blocked). I'm guessing David - I figure I got a couple chances with that
> name.
>
> Drop me an email, let me know if I'm correct
--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

So, how do I win?

I'm working my way through maybe a dozen different audio books. Ya know,
gotta love fantasy and SF and whatnot. But I'm getting tired of it all.
It's mostly the same.

That's not to say it isn't well written and clever, it is. But I feel
like there's something major missing from my life. And more books ain't
it. <sigh>

I do think "Nina Kimberley the Merciless" sounds like a really fun book,
and when I'm in a mood for reading, this is the sort of book I like to
read.

But tonight I'm thoroughly disgusted with my whole life. And too much in
this particular book resonates with my own day-to-day. Here's the young
barbarian princess, mistress of all she surveys, absolute in power. Her
father is dead, and now she is the ruler of her barbarian force, living in
a recently-conquered wealthy kingdom.

But she has no control over her own life. Her barbarian subjects won't
follow her, because she's a young female. If they did follow, she'd be
leading them back into obscurity and poverty on the wild veldt, and
they've gotten soft with the wealth of their new prize. And she can't
leave, because no one will let her, absolute power notwithstanding.

Seems like, after a certain point, there's no drama left. I have a
(marginally) successful Web Two Point Oh! Media Program, heard in a dozen
countries and two dozen states. Probably one person in each of those. If
I produce something interesting for a larger audience, the larger audience
isn't listening anyway, so who would care? My experiments with stuff I
enjoy more resulted in fewer people listening. And the parts they like
listening to is when I'm totally miserable and rambling incoherently. So
ranting incessantly about how much I hate what I've done so far will only
produce an episode more popular with my existing audience -- without
producing a new and/or larger audience.

Bottom line, I'm not doing anything most folks give a crap about.

I do enjoy the heck out of putting something together that sounds kinda
cool. But Right Now, I'm tired of producing more of the same. Because
that doesn't produce More of the Same Audience. It produces the Same
Audience exactly. Till some of that handful get pissed off and walk away.

And I can't produce something different that I find enjoyable, because
that'll lose me the handful who have bothered to listen so far.

And all this is costing me $10 a month to rent the space. And the time I
devote doesn't even enter into the equation.

<sigh>

At least Nina Kimberley the Merciless has a sword and is allowed to behead
a person or two, as long as she doesn't make a habit of it, and impact the
tax base.

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

It's broken, and cannot be mended...

Well, on my podcast, after my recent foray into (a) more frequent shows,
and (b) telling stories, I seem to have lost about a third of my
listeners. I didn't have that many, anyway, 30 or so, and now I have 20
or so. Certainly it'd be nice to have more than 30 listeners. But it's
kind of discouraging to make an effort to try something new and lose part
of the handful of folks who were listening, anyway.

And I don't know if it was too many episodes, or too many stories.

There's nothing wrong with having a small number of loyal listeners. But
I suspect there's such a thing as too few listeners to justify continuing.
And after a whole year, I'm wondering if that's not where I am now.

I like doing the podcast. I'd like to think it's more about the content
than the technology. I can justify continuing the show based on my liking
the technology. But changing the content seems to destroy any interest in
the show by anyone other than me.

The Tech show folks have it kinda easy. Most of the folks who listen to
podcasts are fairly techno-savvy. If you have something that's fun
technically to get downloaded, and covers Tech subjects, you've pretty
much got it in the bag, as George Burns put it.

But if you talk about something that isn't technical, then you don't
appeal to that sizeable chunk of the available audience. And there ain't
much left, since downloading podcasts is hard.

So I may have achieved the full measure of the possible audience for what
I know how to do. And since I have nothing else I know how to do -- maybe
I should stop now?

The truth ? about the current real estate market

I think I may have figured out what happened to the real estate market
lately.

It struck me today, that maybe the folks who trade in real estate have
started believing the current Global Warming talk. So they all that
pricey coastal land they own is going to be under water in a few years.
So, then they start trying to sell alla that expensive land. And it works
for a while, till they run out of people willing to buy that land.
According to the current theories, for example, the island of Manhattan
turns into concrete-covered "wetlands," with these tall towers sticking
out. And this is some of the priciest land in the world.

Meanwhile, they're trying to buy midwestern land, or at least non-coastal
land, that won't be under water. But they don't have the cash, because
now they can't sell all that expensive coastal land they still own. So
they try to borrow money. But everybody's trying to borrow the same money
to buy the same land, so there's no money available. So now nobody's
buying that land, either.

And now their own credit ratings go down, because the value of the land
they own has dropped due to the selling pressure, which brings the whole
economy down.

Makes a scary sort of sense, internally at least, huh?

So, the current economic troubles are all the fault of Al Gore.

Or maybe I'm wrong. ;-)

Stupid Boy!

Well, lemme tell ya what.

If all you want is some stupid boy who'll tell you you're right, even if
he's some stupid hairy little weasel that'll tell you anything you want to
hear...

I ain't buying it.

I'm not gonna be that stupid boy.

I'm not going to replicate the last Stupid Boy you fell for last week, or
last month, or last year. I'm way too old for those petty little games
you may have come to love and demand from all your lovers, for all I can
tell from what I've seen.

If you're looking for an intelligent, all-growed-up Man, I'm easy to find.
If you're looking for a puppy, lots of those around, good luck with that.

No "Stupid boys" here. Good luck with that, go on about your business.

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

The colored guy

So, was just watching the TV commercial about the Colored Guy on the
Elevator.

No, not that sort of Colored Guy, the other sort of Colored Guy -- the
whole elevator full of badly rendered black and white people and one guy
in Living Color.

Except...

I was watching the commercial, and keep in mind I'm 54 % color-vision-
deficient. And the Guy-In-Color walks off the elevator onto the Color
Floor, where they have a Color Printer that makes everything truly
wonderful and blessed by God.

But...

The color sucked. It looked like the output of a color printer designed
by a circus clown with OCD.

And for that matter, the black and white people looked just as sucky. And
both scenes on a large, fairly new LCD screen.

So, what, they're advertising a printer that produces images that look
like crap, but the colors are really bright? And the black and white
images suck just as much?

I think this company needs a new Ad agency.

Or a better quality Printer product.

One never knows.

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>

Stories are good

Based on my current feedback, my current Grizzly's Growls shows with the
Tales from the Brothers Grimm are either a good idea, or a not-all-that-
bad idea.

One person said it was okay to tell stories, but keep up the Personal
Stuff sort of shows. The other said that the stories were really cool.
So, that's either 50-50, or maybe 60-40, since the negative vote was "but
it's okay to do anyway."

Any other votes? Have I become thoroughly annoying, whining about my
personal problems once a week?

You will note I've stopped trying the once-a-day thing, and then the twice-
a-day thing. Looked as if nobody was keeping up with alla them so
frequent shows anyway. So I'm back to once a week. Might do twice a
week, with say Sunday for a story, and maybe Thursday for my incessant
whining.

And if all else fails, I'll do once a week, Sunday only, whichever sort of
show I feel like doing at the time.

Or something completely different -- I haven't managed to find another
cohost, and I was certainly hopeful about Tina being on the show. Oh,
wait, I wasn't gonna mention her name. Pretend I never said anything.
Her boyfriend might not approve. ;-0

--
Grizzly's Growls
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Podcast: <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
Blog: <http://grizzlysgrowls.blogspot.com>