Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

Hey babe wanna increase my downline

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old kind … nowadays I read posts and while I might still question the timing — why am I reading this right now when I should be reading Flannery O’Connor for the apologetics seminar I have to record, for instance — the value is often pretty decent.

Blogging has matured, which might be one of those “tallest building in Topeka” designations (or, if you grew up in the 1980s, this, at the 3:25 mark) but seriously, it’s improved. People with something to say are managing to say it, and find people who want to hear it. Focused blog posts, with calls to action, the array of sharing options, and followers in some cases in the 10s of thousands.

In other words, many elements absent from this particular post.

Because I feel pretty good about starting to figure all this out. Yes. Starting. Blogging has changed — and so have I, because at one time I would never even have used the word blogging. And just when I’m starting, maybe feeling like I’m already a pretty good writer and won’t just talk about myself all the time, but will find ways to connect with people … with you … something else starts happening.

I’m getting serious about my writing.

’bout time, huh?

Several authors are to blame for this, including Walter Brueggemannm, as well as Craig Barnes, and the above-mentioned Miss O’Connor. There is also the work and example of Rich Mullins and a book by Lawrence Thornton on what telling the truth actually is.  Just as I begin “blogging,” I find that I shouldn’t be writing any ol’ thing.

Blogging itself has moved forward
I am daily getting older and older
Now comes seriousness to afflict

Long story short, if it’s not too late, the last 24 months, and particularly the last 2-4, have conspired against me to say to me that the things I really want to say to you are the things I should really try to say … which is to say, the things I should write.

God is in it, too.

I am certain.

Still tempted, and have succumbed, to the desire to tweet every time I learn a new word, or string a few hundred of them together in a blog post, or a few thousand of them together in an eBook. But today I saw this, on Twitter, from Rich Tatum:

Asking ‘How can I use Twitter to market product?’ is like asking,
‘How can I use your dinner party to grow my downstream network?’

There is still too much of this, hence my title on this post. We’re all out scrambling for dates and trying not to look desperate. Kings of the Dipshits one and all, and far more kings than subjects, it seems like. Well it’s not the truth but yeesh, c’mon people … do we even want it to seem like it is?

All this together means, roughly, find a way.

But why shouldst thou care? This post, while offering value, including relevant and helpful links, and not going on too terribly long, is it anything that should matter to you?

If you are a true fan, or going to be, then yes.

This could end up very good indeed, for you.

For starters, I’m interested in what you think.

Please write and tell me.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Duo

… More then says because he’s in prison and only has a coal with which to write he can’t respond fully to the view that one ought harm an evil man lest he cause even greater harm to such as are innocent and good. But He counsels us that even if it be our formal office to punish an evil

Read More »

When We Lie

If mere humans may have things abominable to them, mine is lying. I hate it in nearly all forms: commercial advertising and political propaganda, of course, as well as even when people doing good things feel compelled to pretend they are flawless: that the rotten thing they just did is required by that good thing

Read More »

Barbaric Yawn

One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and

Read More »

Inconvenient Truth

Near the start of The Shawshank Redemption Andy Dufresne is on the witness stand, losing a battle for his life he will ultimately win. The district attorney calls “inconvenient” the inability to find the gun used in the crime. Andy has used the gun to make a hole in the river, though not to make

Read More »

Related

Unintelligent Design

Your plan is not working, they say. Ah, but my plan is working, we respond. (I just haven’t fully implemented it, yet … ) But look at the results you’re getting, they say. Things a’gonna change, just you wait, comes our reply. * The truth is, our plan is working. Mine is, yours is, theirs

Read More »

God a Day

My sister gave me a “page-a-day” calendar for Christmas. Michele’s not as fond of them, because of all the paper I think she says. For me, it seems the perfect item: you tear one off, and bam! you’re done. Though it is a lot of paper … But mine is Bible verses, and it’s a

Read More »

True Romance

Mentioned last week the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term used in film to refer to a female — not a woman, mark you, but a girl or perhaps female, depending on the level of [im]maturity — who exists in a story not for herself, more deeply not as a Self, but only for the

Read More »

You’re Doing It Wrong

A friend once recounted how a mutual acquaintance of ours had told her God spoke to him, which he meant both literally and verbally. It’s enough on one point to note the gent didn’t say God spoke with him — which wd seem to be preferred, all things taken together — but that isn’t what I’ll

Read More »