Author: fifteenkey (Page 60 of 95)

I’ve been using Google Analytics since January 30th to measure traffic here.

Oh, as a side note. Of course the image
in the previous post is not Magritte’s
“The Voice of Silence,” but rather
“The Scream” by Eddie Munch.
But you knew that…

Anyway, the Google tool has allowed me to gather quite a bit of information on you. I don’t know who you are; well, actually, I do know who some of you are and frankly, you scare me. What about you lurkers? You voyeurs… To quote Pete Townshend, “Who the fuck are you?”

Let’s begin with where you are. Although not the majority, many of you live in Massachusetts. Here are the top 10 locations and number of visits:

Maynard 86 Hey Jeff…
Leominster 49 Who are you?
Waltham 46 That goes for you, too.
Hudson 20
Cambridge 18
Braintree 15
Clinton 14
Foxboro 12
Andover 9
West Roxbury 9 Um, hi.

Now let’s delve into some of the search terms that get people here and what they do once they arrive…

Fifteenkey.com is the most popular search term, but I’m not sure how people come up with it to do a search. Searches on my name are the second most popular, and those people spend quite a bit of time “just looking,” averaging about 8 pages viewed per visit. Other popular search terms leading the unfortunate here are:

count chocula
http://vistadome.com who moved my cheese
rob zombie “god of thunder”
phil rudd wife
phil rudds house
phil rudd’s wife
pomade liquid tsa regulation?
songs about depression loneliness fakeness
symbolism in jm barrie’s peter pan
????

Finally, fans of Wilco have ended up here with a variety of searches:

there’s a light (one light)
there’s a light what light
there’s a light, white light
what light letterman mpeg
wilco letterman “what light” mpeg
wilco

Speaking of Wilco, I’m getting fired up for their upcoming show on Thursday, June 28th at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston.

So, who are you?

I turned off the Sopranos years ago after a particularly brutal beating of a woman by Ralph Cifaretto, played by Joe Pantoliano. I’ve just never been a big fan of gratuitous violence. An old friend wouldn’t watch the show as a protest of the depiction of Italians in it. Perhaps my boycott helped me to swallow last nights um, ending of the HBO series. I had picked up again toward the end and endured the last few episodes. My heart was pounding in the last, brilliant few minutes to the point I could hear the blood surging through my heart in anticipation of Tony’s spraying on the screen. Creator David Chase wrote and directed the finale and he used every trick in the book, even stealing shamelessly from “the Godfather” to peak the tension, but the climax never um, came… That left many fans feeling frustrated and blue.

It’s always interesting to share family “news” with family members, especially when it’s not news like “Kyle just graduated from Harvard” or “Megan’s artwork is being auctioned at Sotheby’s” or “Jessica just got the lead in Evita.” My news is typically more subtle, but Kyle is happy and an absolute joy to be around, Megan is maturing rapidly and finding peace with the path of her life, and Jessica is coming around to understanding she’s still got tremendous potential to fulfill. It’s all pretty positive from a particular point of view.

Last week the news I shared was with my Dad, a man with his head stuck in the norms of a half century ago. He reminds me of “Beulah” in a scene from “Field of Dreams.” When Kevin Costner’s wife, played wonderfully by Amy Madigan, suggests to Beulah that “if she had just experienced the sixties.” Beulah indignantly fired back, “I *experienced* the sixties,” to which Annie calmly replied, “No, I think you had two fifties and moved right into the seventies.” That’s Dad. He sees black and white and right and wrong with no shades of gray. He ended the call shortly after I shared my news, only saying, “I don’t know how you do it. My heart breaks for you.”

The strange thing is, I gave him no reason to think I was at all distressed. I described the positives, but I guess all he heard was the white noise of 50’s shame. It’s ironic that decade is looked upon generally with such nostalgic fondness, but it was largely cold, dark and repressive. Its society would have shunned all of my children for different reasons. I’m glad I caught only 14 months of it.

There’s a Boston.com feature today on all the New England war dead from the Bush fiasco in Iraq. Specialist Kyle Little was from West Boylston and he had not yet reached the age to legally have a beer at the family cookout today. Now he never will. This one Kyle was killed May 8, 2007, in Iraq, by a roadside bomb.

Today there are over 3,000 American mothers mourning their lost children and there’s no end in sight. How many more mothers will be reduced to writing letters to their dead child like Gina Barnhurst does every Sunday? Her son, Eric was killed by a sniper in Iraq on Oct. 21st.

Last night I awoke to a glowing TV promoting upcoming HBO shows. I heard Bill Maher say, “I’m pissed off that more people aren’t pissed off.” Since President Bush addressed the nation March 19, 2003, the word “stability” has been frequently used by an administration who’s Iraq policy has produced anything but. Not that there hasn’t been stability as a result of the Bush-Cheney war. ExxonMobil’s profit growth has been obscenely stable:

It’s not often you hear the name of a customer in a song, but I just did. Somewhere between sit-up 21 and 22 of set 2 of 8, I heard this in the Drive By Truckers “Never Gonna Change:”

The “ABI” is the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and they were an AFIS customer of mine when I worked for NEC. That’s pretty much all I’ve got for ya… Hey, it’s a holiday weekend! Oh, alright. Here’s the video and some more lyrics of the song…

In a George Orwell essay, “Why I Write,” the author of a novel titled the same as a David Bowie song cites four primary reasons. The first, or um, primary primary reason is clearly listed in the description of this space, just with a different word; vanity. In Mr. Orwell’s words it’s:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.

I’ll admit, the white-hot spotlight is a hot rock massage for my ego. Recently it was suggested to me that blogging may be driven by an “acting gene.” I asked it and was stunned to find this article on the tendency of special needs children to love acting. Needless to say, Mr. Kyle Daley is a fine actor and impressionist. One that cracks me up is his take on Robert Shaw as “Quint” in “Jaws.” He gets all shy when I ask him to do it in front of an audience, but when he barks this Quint line, it just fills me with hope and light.

As for my own “acting gene,” it’s probably more aligned to this gene.

I’ll paraphrase Freddy Neech replacing “Poets” with “Bloggers.”

Fulfilled. When I got to step 33, “attach the net,” it felt good. After mowing the weeds today, I successfully reversed the step that could not be reversed and completed the following 28 steps to completion. Of course my back is aching now so there won’t be any more than an obligatory few layups… Now it’s time for a shower and 30 minutes of stairs and rock followed by another shower and who knows what. Kyle is in a “I miss my mom” mood and will be hanging with her tonight so I’m solo and single! Yeah, I’ll probably stay in and watch the Sox…

Kyle’s mom has been gone since Thursday to rescue her own mom who was left in Canada by her insanely evil (not in a good way) husband. He’s a real dick. He once said to his wife about Kyle, “in my day they used to put kids like him away.” He’s a fucked up old man, and I hope if I ever see the small minded SOB again, I’ll rise above the emotion his heartless statement brings out in me.

Anyway, let’s get that out of the system with some stair climbing, shall we?

(Written Friday…)

I’m back. Back in a tin can, with Vegas back in the desert dust and depression. The title of this post is a great line from Wilco’s “How to Fight Loneliness,” the first song to pop from mypod on the flight home. The APA show was good for me. It was great to chat with many of our customers. They are so hungry for that dialogue… that relationship. I’ll do it again next month at the SHRM show and I’ll be better prepared after this weeks experience.

As for off-hours observations, the first is that smoking is allowed in the casinos and you have to navigate them to get to the conference center, restaurants, etc… There’s no avoiding the maze of craps and cards and it’s 24/7. One morning I walked down in search of caffeine. I was darkened by the drooping dropping ashes into cups detained desperately by one armed dreamers downing one more drink… It was 6:30am.

Still, I do love the fakeness of it all. Fake skies, fake cities, fake tits (not that there’s anything wrong with that…), fake love and fake Elvi… Depraved Disney.

Just today the whole Memorial Day thing dawned on me. It also occurs to me I have no plans at all. I’m sure I’ll take the boy to see “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Hey, maybe it’s at the local Drive-In. I hear it’s hot back home.

Update: The tech support folks at the basketball hoop manufacturer responded to my plea with a possible solution to the “This step cannot be reversed” quandary:

“You will need to make sure that there isn’t any hardware on the poles, take a piece of cardboard or a blanket and place it on your driveway, kneel down and hold the pole horizontal (flat) about waist high while you are kneeling, you will then drop the pole from waist high onto the blanket or piece of cardboard about 50-60 times and the vibration should release the poles.”

I guess I do have plans.

A sweet combination of 0’s and 1’s are currently digitally empowered via push technology to eDeliver Social Distortion’s “Winners and Losers” to exceed the expectations of my synapses and soul. Yeah, I’m in Marketing. Anyway, I’ve never seen the band, but plan to soon. Here’s a current lineup of local summer shows I hope will tickle my cochlea and undress my last retinal nerve.

Thu 06/28/07 Wilco Bank of America Pavilion
Mon 07/16/07 Jason Isbell T.T. The Bear’s
Sun 07/29/07 Social Distortion Hampton Beach Casino
Fri 08/24/07 John Hiatt Summer Music Series – Lowell
Fri 09/07/07 Bob Newhart Boston Convention Center

Note: I don’t wish to smell, touch or taste any of these people. As for my sixth sense, well, it’s always engaged.

It must be the altitude, radiation or smorgasbord of smells in the bathroom, but my brain seems to take on the qualities of the one planted into Peter Boyle by Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein.” For those of you who’ve been deprived of this Mel Brooks classic, the brain was obtained by the hump-backed “Igor,” played by Marty Feldman. When “the monster” begins to exhibit behaviors not assimilated at charm school, Wilder’s “Dr. Frederick Frahn-ken-steen” inquires about the brain:

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
Igor: And you won’t be angry?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I will NOT be angry.
Igor: Abby someone.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby someone. Abby who?
Igor: Abby Normal.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby Normal?
Igor: I’m almost sure that was the name.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?
[shakes and grabs him]
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME?

Anyway, when this tin can finally pushes to the gate I should be in Sin City. This is my first of three trips to Vegas in 2007. This one is for the American Payroll Association Congress and it’s at Bally’s. The Society for Human Resources Management conference is in June, followed by our own customer conference in early November. I believe both of those are at the Venetian, a fabulous hotel and the home of a Guggenheim Museum.

Aside from chatting with customers and learning about what else is happening in the world of payroll, I hope to catch a show at the Improv at Harrah’s. I consider it primary research…