Showing posts with label Life's Lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life's Lessons. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

What to Blog when there's nothing to Blog about?

Twelve years ago I could always find something on which to write a blog post. Back then I was very keyed into politics, especially the local variety, and there seemingly was always something I found interesting.

Fast Forward to today.

Don't give two shits about politics, don't vote, pretty much dislike every politician and political candidate out there, and except for a few close friends, I'm not particularly interested in debating any of the political bloggers still standing. Here's the rub though, there aren't many.  And the ones that are still standing are partisan and boring.

Mind numbingly boring.

Nor do I miss the days when a humorous blog post (usually making fun of a really bad political ad involving a motorcycle or some such) got me labeled as a "thinly veiled misogynist" or *shudder* a Teabagger. Granted, the fist insult probably involved deep research by the poster who had to determine whether they were using the words right (all three of them probably) and the 2nd was just a word thrown around to try and disparage anyone the poor second writer didn't like.  They had no clue what it meant, they just knew their political friends were using it and the Jr. High level humor made them feel wise.

From circular reasoning to begging the question the old political blogoshpere was a minefield of logical fallacies wrapped in a 5th grade writing level package. In short: It was bad. It was a little ironic that I won my one award, but shuttered my blog prior to the Houston Press releasing their issue naming me "Political blogger of the year" or something along those lines. (This was right at the tail end of their "Best of Houston" actually meaning something. In fact, it might have been the end of it meaning something.) [On another note: I miss the old Houston Press]

Political blogging became boring. Politics became boring. The Left disagreed with the Right who disagreed with others on the Right who disagreed with pretty much everyone. When it came down to it though, both sides were the same, it was just different courtiers hanging on to each side, seeking their pile of the public largesse. When it comes right down to it, the only philosophical difference between Team Red and Team Blue is who they want the government to write the checks to.

So, I bugged out, and I never looked back.

At this point you might be thinking "He's saying all of this to announce that he's dipping his toes back into the pool, that he's going to paint himself and some wonderful centrist, smarter than everyone else with a reasoned take on everything that the two parties are lacking."

Nope.

I'm not. For one, I'm not smart enough to try and solve all of the world's problems, shit, I'm not smart enough to solve my neighborhood's problems. Nor am I especially driven to try all that hard. And I'm sure as Hell not interested in talking to politicians again, or talking to political bloggers again for that matter, I'm quite content to leave them to their joyless corner of the World. Have fun kids.

The fact is that I just felt the need to write something today, and I've found that blogs are usually pretty good when there's a little bit of navel gazing going on.  I'm not sure what I'm going to write about on this thing going forward, but it will be something. I've always said that writing like this fills a creative void in my life that my job just cannot (nothing wrong with my job, but the nature of it is not creative).

I've tried to write a book, but I've neither the skill, nor the attention span to keep with it. I think I've written about one tenth of one chapter, then life gets back in the way.

So the accountant in me will continue to work at my job, and earn the money, and the failed, bad, writer in me will continue to pound away on this blog. I might touch on some current events, some sports and sports betty things, and I might just touch on the things I find absurd in this world. Trust me, there are a LOT of those things.

That's the fun stuff that I have been missing from my early days of blogging, just writing about whatever the Hell I want.  I've been meaning to get back to that, so here we go. I cannot promise a post per day or something silly like that, but I should be able to turn out at least one per every week or two. It just depends on what I find that interests me.


Your mileage and entertainment value may vary. At least you'll get out of it what you paid for it.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Social Media: Changing Things up a bit.

One lesson that I've learned over the past couple of years is that I've got a great face for blogging.

After two plus years of (admittedly lazily) putting up video content my You Tube channel has exactly 38 followers.

If you're not familiar with YouTube stuff, that sucks. Which means, by extension, I suck at the vlogging thing and there's very little about what Mrs. TPM and I do that really makes people want to tune in, subscribe, like etc. Of course, it probably does not help that I'm a) Typically too lazy/drunk to remember to record shit, and b) typically too disinterested/lazy to actually edit videos.

It's not y'all, it's me.

With that in mind I'm making some changes. For one, as you've seen lately, I'm firing the blog back up. I'm more comfortable writing here than I am talking over there and I have more freedom here to write about what I want. Unlike my past trends, I'm not shutting down my YouTube channel, but there will be no more trip reports etc. There might be some room tours, and possibly come sports season a sports-betting vlog or three, but no more trip reports.

For future Trip Reports I'm going back to The Vegas Fanatics Board where I post under the user name "Nick Pappageorgio".  You don't have to be a member to view the reports, and I'll link to them on this blog, but you do have to create a "free" account to post on that board. It's ran by a couple of really good people who I support with $25 annually to help them defray costs, and also get an ad-free experience.

I'll also keep posting under @CoryWCrow (The PublicMoney) on Twitter. And yes, that is my real name. I don't put anything on that machine that I do not stand behind, nor am ashamed of, nor am I worried about my work finding something on there that might get me in trouble/suspended/fired.  Same as here.

When I started the YouTube channel I thought it would be a laugh. What I did not realize is that, to be perfectly blunt, Mrs. TPM and I are actually pretty boring, and we're not big fans of recording every damn thing that we do. That makes for a piss-poor Vlog if you ask me.

I'll be starting some discussions on there about the upcoming football season soon however, once I get my numbers tied down and make my initial plays. I'm looking forward to this change because I really miss writing here on a consistent basis, and I really miss writing about sports, sports betting, gambling, casinos etc. I'll probably throw in some travel related stuff as well, provided we're actually allowed to keep traveling.

What you're not going to see much of any more is a ton of politics. I was blogging about them for a while there but mostly because what we were seeing in the media and from politicians was a ton of bollocks. That doesn't mean that I won't talk about politics, especially as it relates to sports, sports betting or travel, but it does mean that I'm not going to revert to being a political blogger.

As you're reading this, I will be on the last day of a quick casino trip to Tulsa. I'm hoping you decide to check into Vegas Fanatics and my Twitter account to see how it all went.

Good Luck, best smart, win jackpots.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Metro flies route cut balloon, Chron tries to provide cover.

Too bad (for them) the residents aren't buying it....

(Bus riders give Metro an earful on proposed route cuts, Zain Shauk, Chron.com)
Frustrated bus riders gave transit officials an earful Monday at a hearing on proposed bus route cuts, including one that would not be replaced by an alternative.

The changes proposed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority include the elimination of 10 bus routes and adjustments, including a few expansions to 40 others. The agency is proposing to expand service on some routes.
Overall however, the "service adjustments" amount to a severe decrease in service to neighborhoods that most rely on Metro. The neighborhoods that it's Metro's prime directive to provide service. If they fail on this, then they fail on their core mission. And, yes, they are failing on this as we speak, dedicated to building a shiny, fancy toy train that's designed to move shiny, fancy people from shiny, fancy place to shiny, fancy place. If you can keep the dull, plain people OFF the shiny, fancy train then that's all the better.

Meanwhile, you have to feel sorry for the poor. While the left-leaning un-elected Fed bureaucrats in D.C. are trying their best to price cars out of their reach (that's even admitted by the regulations staunchest supporters such as Thomas Friedman*) local, left-leaning un-elected bureaucrats in Houston are trying to take away the very transit that they are suggesting they rely upon. And the supposed "watchdog" media, is cheering them on every step of the way.

The late Marvin Zindler was right: It's HELL to be poor (although he knew very little about that)








*Yes, that's the same Thomas Friedman who chides others for not being 'green' enough while he himself lives in an 11,000 sq ft mansion. Green indeed.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Worth the Premium

Let's be honest. There's a lot of stuff on the market today that's marketed as "premium" that's not really worth the extra money for most people. "Premium" gasoline, "Premium" coffee you name it. Most of it is the product of good marketing convincing people that they have to have the best. It's fake-luxury at it's finest.


That being said there are a few things in life that are worth paying extra in order to get 'premium' quality.


Foremost among these is charcoal. Buy the sub-par stuff one time and you'll see what I mean. Stick with Kingsford* or, better yet, hardwood charcoal. You won't regret it.






*Dear FTC**: No, I haven't received anything free for this post, nor I been financially rewarded for saying Kingsford charcoal is superior. I buy my own weekly at the store thank you very much. (That being said, if someone from Kingsford wants to talk a sponsorship deal....hey, I do a LOT of grilling.)


**Thanks to commenter EdT for the free copy editing, unfortunately I hit the "delete" key on the comment instead of "accept" on that comment.

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