Thank you, solar storm

Solar storms are getting more and more publicity as we're going further into 2012.  You know why, doomsayers and apocalyptic crows are working hard to scare the hell out of everybody and solar weather is one of the more scientific 'tools' at their command.  It actually IS dangerous, kind of. 

I've been into solar storms for quite a while now.  No, I'm not an astrophysicist, even straightforward physics in high school was a nightmare for me, but sun flares and the whole space weather phenomenon is fascinating and I've been learning as much as I can.  Even learning physics is digestable when fueled by passion :). 

Anyway, I've put together two websites about the Sun and its frolics (so far) - one about solar storms, the other about their influence on human beings.  You be the judge if they are any useful, I can only tell you that they were pleasure to create. 

I am usually rather ineffective at traffic driving.  I avoid social media like the plague, and I'm allergic to the language of advertising - hence my traffic tends to be rather low.  Unless...  a solar storm happens :).

Solar storms and technology do not go too well together.  I imagine an extreme case could knock my laptop out for good, so I wouldn't go so far as saying that I'm looking forward to them.  But - over last two days, when space weather is rather inclement, my traffic on the 'cosmic' pages increased by 300%.  With some autoirony I have to explain that it jumped from 2 to 8 pageviews...  but it's still an improvement, yes?

So - dear Sun, thank you so much for your flares!  Flare more, if you please - with moderation.

To give you some details about recent activity - there was an X5 flare produced on March 7th (which happens to be my birthday as well, haha) and it sparked minor to moderate storms (5-7 on 9-point scale) over the following days.  One is on even at this very moment, but since my laptop is not emitting any sparks, I'm not worried. 

Hope your tech gadgets are just as unaffected.

A washing up story

A deep thought flashed through my head recently (yes, it does happen sometimes).  I was engaged in the thrilling activity of dishwashing and suddenly remembered all those TV ads, where thick layers of burnt grease dissolved instantaneously under a single drop of the washing-up liquid advertised.  'A lovely vision' I thought, ceasing scrubbing a pan to wipe the sweat from my brow.  One little problem.  I've washed a few pans in my life, not even mentioning baking trays, roasting dishes and innumerable armies of other assorted crockery, I've even used various washing-up liquids (some of them even known from tv ads) and never, NEVER have I seen such a magical scene unfolding.  No grease of mine has ever been scared by a detergent, no matter how famous or well branded.  Somehow, it always ended up with scrubbing.  Is it me, I wonder?  Is my world somehow flawed?  Am I the only house-keeping woman in the world whose dishes stubbornly refuse to get cleaned by themselves?  Is it a curse?  An evil godmother's gift?  'No dishwashing miracles for you, my child' whispered slyly at my birth? 

Funny thing - I don't think so.  I find it far, far more likely that the advertisers simply try to stuff us full of bullshit.  No dishes clean themselves, no matter what you pour on them, full stop.  But if a poor, tired housewife believed they could, that the solution to greasy problems is only those few dollars (euros/pounds/enter your currency here) away, wouldn't she buy?  Wouldn't she?

Another funny thing, I've never actually met any dish-washing person (whatever the sex or occupation) who believed this crap.  I'm not a particularly sociable person, but of all the people I've ever met, not a single one declared belief in self-cleaning kitchen appliances.  It is of course possible that so far I have been lucky enough to meet only highly intelligent people and didn't realise it but...  Well, let's call it a statistical improbability, ok?  I meet various people, most of them - average.   Yet they still don't believe in the magic of washing-up liquid. 

I would even hazard a guess that no one believes it.  Or - as with Yeti or Bigfoot - there are individuals who believe in their existence, but the majority calls it a bluff for lack of evidence.  No confirmed sightings, ladies and gentleman. 

Yet the advertisers keep on insisting that their (and only their, mind you) particular brand will make the grease go away.  No effort, no scrubbing, splash a drop and see how all the dirt goes away. 

They keep on lying.  We keep on knowing that they are lying.  We keep on not believing them, more than that, we keep on NOT EXPECTING THEM TO BE TRUE ANYMORE.  Everyone knows that you cannot trust advertisement so no one does.  Yet it is still being manufactured by the tonne (eee...  mega-tv-hour?  giga-newspaper-column?), it is bought, sold, force-fed to unwilling recipients:  tv viewers, magazine readers, Web-users, even innocent pedestrians or drivers, FFS! 

Guess what, if I feel like fairy tales, I read brothers Grimm.  At least they don't ask me to buy a fairy afterwards. 

There shall be NO Valentine story

Drat, it's happening again.  Another highly marketable 'celebration' coming up and I'm scared to open my fridge again, the likelihood that someone in heart-covered suit will jump out and try to sell me something being so high.  All the local shops are invaded by various shades of red and pink, all the headlines include the V-word and it looks like other things simply don't exist anymore - if it's not heart-shaped, it doesn't count.

Yuck.

Love is beautiful and sweet and probably the most important thing in every individual's life, agreed.  But what gets me frothing are people who pretend to glorify love while manufacturing monuments to - yeah, you've guessed it - moneymaking.  I suppose love of money can be just as strong as any other love or can it?  Is it just me or something stinks in the whole enterprise? 

When it is not about the money, it's cheesy as hell.  I've seen some appeals to 'share your personal love story' recently.  Oh my.  I'm sure your love story is unique to you, special, precious, blah blah, but to me (and countless other Internet users) it is hardly interesting and painfully cheesy.  I've read a few such concoctions in my time and well - I will never make this mistake again. 

And I will most certainly not share mine.  Love is special, unique, precious - because it is INTIMATE, PRIVATE, PERSONAL, it is some amazing magic shared between me and the Other.  None of this things goes hand in hand with hundreds of strangers reading it, judging it and commenting upon it!!!! 

So no, there shall be no Valentine story today, or any other day.  There shall be patient counting the days down until the madness subsides...

...and Mothering Day craze begins.  Or Paddy's Day.  Or any money-generating 'celebration'.

No bullshit marketing

I've been working on concept of 'no bullshit marketing' for quite a while now. 

The whole idea was born from the fact that I'm literally sick because of the amount of crap advertising all around.  The very word SALE gives me nausea, as it is slowly becoming the case with words like 'unique', 'hot', 'bargain' and the likes.  The smell of bullshit surrounding them lingers stubbornly and can fuel my anger for hours at a time. 

Ok, fine, but it's damn easy to say something is crappy and do nothing about it and I'm being a bit more ambitious here - I feel a need to suggest something INSTEAD of bullshit marketing.  After all I also have a product to 'sell' - I'm a content writer and my very existence depends on my content finding a reader.  If I don't talk about it, I am extremely unlikely to be found and there is not much I can do or say to make it less true (a friend of mine keeps suggesting that I show my tits off online - what a shame this is not my style, as it would probably work). 

Here comes a difficult question:  how to promote my own work knowing how much I hate people promoting their stuff?  It looks impossible from the black/white perspective, at first sight the choice is between forgetting conscience and joining the worldwide crap production or quitting self-employment altogether and becoming a cog in someone else's machine (which would probably still equal producing crap, but I would at least have an excuse - someone made me do it!).  Neither option looked even remotely interesting, but instead of giving up, I decided to dig deeper. 

What if the way a product/service is promoted mattered?  I looked closely at other people's marketing strategies and tried to determine some factors that drive me up the wall and guess what I've found - it's definitely not the fact that they do advertise and expect to be paid.  Gosh, I don't have a slightest problem with that, just the opposite!  So where was the culprit? 

Right there, in most promoting materials available, and his name was BULLSHIT. 

I hate being lied to.  I hate when someone tries to bullshit me for any reason.  I refuse to have anything to do with a person or a company who tries to manipulate me and deceive me from the moment we meet.  I bet I'm not the only one - possibly I'm slightly more aware of this manipulation, but I'm sure most people would be just as angry as I if they only bothered to notice what's happening around them.

I have already written an article on how to translate bullshit advertising and what do the sellers REALLY tell their customers.  You can find it here if you wish - I am quite happy with the way it turned out and I can promise you a laugh or two - so I'm not going to repeat myself in too many words.  The biggest, most basic and most hurtful bullshit present in almost all existing advertising is this:  we are here for you. 

Oh?  Are you?  So if you win the lottery tomorrow, you will not leave your selling work immediately but continue writing marketing material FOR THE FUN OF IT?  Rubbish. 

I will believe no seller in the whole wide world who tries to feed me with lines like 'chosen for your satisfaction' and 'our aim is to serve'.  What is wrong with saying:  I am in this job to earn cash to survive?  It is not something shameful, FFS!  It's a fact of life - we need money to survive, earn or starve.  If a seller believes in providing only high quality service to actually deserve the pay - fantastic.  Talk about it!  Say it loud and proud, it's a noble aim.  But 'we are here to make you happy'?  No, thank you, I'm not buying. 

I still have a lot to think through before my idea is present in some shape, but I already know one basic, important rule that will be incorporated somewhere in the system:  NEVER LIE.  Never.  Ever.  Don't manipulate, don't 'forget' about facts, don't keep the ugly details secret.  Transform them, so that you wouldn't have to feel ashamed talking about them.  Then talk, with pride. 

What do you think?  Would you like to live in a world where you could actually believe advertisers instead of being perpetually on the lookout for the small print?

I know I would.  And because I vividly remember Gandhi's words 'Be the change you want to see in the world', I'm commiting myself to create a no bullshit marketing strategy. 

Wish me luck and hop on if it's your type of a ride.

Something to brag about

Aah, finally some recognition.  One of my (gorgeous, fabulous and absolutely fantastic, obviously) lenses has made it to the top 100 of 2011 and then was voted even further, to the top 11.  The fame!  The pride!  The glory!  The traffic...

The lens in question is titled 50 things you can do to improve the world and is a shameless example of writing something that people will like.  Or, a skillful compromise - my real thoughts stripped of all the cynical nastiness.  If the world was a nice place, the lens would be 100% honest and truthful.  I wonder, does applying some inner censorship makes a piece of writing dishonest?  Or maybe I simply was a good girl for suppressing my inner anger at the world's injustice and believing for a second that the said world is worth the effort of saving it? 

Anyway, it was awesome to feel seen and appreciated for those three days or so.  Traffic was fantastic, feedback very encouraging and overall it felt great.  

It is less great to see my five minutes of fame slowly passing by but hey - c'est la vie.  I might even keep the rank high enough to actually earn some money off it. 

Funny, when you think about it - obviously the lens is good, it wouldn't be chosen if it wasn't.  Yet so far, in 6 months of its exinstence, it has earned a staggering $0.87.  Just makes you think how Squidoo (and the Internet in general) work...

Oops, I did it again...

Yesterday I woke up and realised that something terrible has happened. 

I missed the end of the world. 

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No, seriously.   Remember Harold Camping?  The guy I wrote about in Armageddon that Didn't Happen and Apocalypse Schmapocalypse?  After his May 21 Rapture failed to materialise, he annouced that it's only 6 months respite and the world will actually end on October 21. 

You may have noticed (from the articles above if nothing else) how I'm a huge Camping fan.  I find it amazing that the guy preaches, is heard and given money.  Real, tangible, cold cash, paid to Camping's organisation in hope of (I presume) redemption before the Big Day.  Un-be-lie-va-ble.

With all that, I simply missed the Apocalypse.  I didn't notice it happening in any way whatsoever, so...  I forgot.  I completely ignored the Big Day. 

Now, that's the kind of Armageddon I like.

Charitable outrage

Ho, ho, ho, Christmas is almost upon us and so are unnumerable charity collectors with their jingling boxes.  No shop entrance is safe anymore, a busy street on a typical day sprouts at least ten of those dearest creatures and I even found a nativity scene in my local Tesco with a poorbox smartly tucked away in the corner.  I do get irritated by those charity enforcers.  I usually ignore them, but this year I wanted to actually say something about it, hence my lens Charity - to give or not to give?.

I started work on this article only mildly pissed off by the jingling boxes, but I did some research on the subject and what I found out turned me purple with rage.  I found a website, 'charity navigator', which evaluates American charities, shows basics of each organisation's accounts and...  salary of a top person.  I nearly fainted when I saw those figures.  $250,000 seems to be a standard pay, but more talented individuals cash in more than half a million bucks.  Your bucks, dear reader, the very same money that you gave to this nice looking guy who told you some touching stories about poor kiddies and hungry souls, and how your donation will help save lives. 

Yes, well, I agree that saving the children starts with your own home, but I don't think a shark pool is a necessary accessory for healthy growing up.  I mean - what do they spend this kind of money on?  A diamond studded toilet bowl?  A ferrari for each family member? 

You know what's the very ugliest thing in the whole business?  People who GIVE to charity usually are not very well off themselves.  They tend to understand suffering and poverty better, because it's not too far from their own doors.  Many, many of them could probably use help of some charity themselves.  And it's off their money that CEO's check is being paid. 

I don't expect some big fish in a charity organisation to read this post and experience a change of heart - if you do something as disgusting, you probably carry a lump of stone in your chest and appealing to your conscience is no use.  Instead, I hope some of you, dear donors, will read this carefully, draw your conclusions and perhaps hesitate before giving.  Maybe ask some questions.  Find out more about the organisation you want to support. 

I tend to follow a simple rule when giving money to charity - if the collector looks better fed than me, I keep my wallet closed. 

Oh, I almost forgot.  This post is rather stingy on names, figures and other details, but the lens that was born out of all this research is just the opposite.  I actually trawled through the list of charities that Squidoo donates to and listed salaries of presidents/CEOs/chairmen of all I could find.  Do have a look, it's an eye-opener.