Nobel Prize Laureates Danced the Night Away in Night Club

Well...Not exactly. It's "Nobel prize laureates danced the night away in virtual night club".
"Live sounds and video were projected from the famous Club NEVERDIE into the physical night club, creating the illusion that the Nobel Laureates and the avatars were dancing and partying together" - Press release, Market Wire.
Ok. Bit wierd. Grumpy old gramps dancing to the flashing lights. Couple of questions. What happens if you link up a few night-clubs, and project the crowd in each into the others, creating the illusion of one massive night club? And secondly, why weren't the nobel winners projected out? But I'm pretty sure somebody must have thought about this already, and there must be nightclubs which share crowds virtually and I'm also sure there must be a lot more innovation to this than only sharing crowds. Definitely needs more looking into. But then, bloviating on this without pictures or a video is a bit pointless...


Ok. So I go over to check out Club Neverdie, and run smack bang into something even more wierd. Club Neverdie, it turns out, is a virtual space station, inside an online game called Entropia. Wierd part is, there's a big virtual universe inside the game, and hunders of thousands of registered members roaming and spending time in this universe. These players buy and sell parts of the world, with real money. Jon Jacobs, the guy who owns the club, brought the spaceship for $100,000. That's real money. And turns out there's a huge real estate boom in the Entropia universe. With players developing virtual property and selling it off.

Finally, the wierdest part is that the owners of these virtual properties, like Jacobs, are tying up with owners of real places, like the club the Nobel laureates ended up in, to mix up both worlds and produce cocktails of real and virtual worlds. This is getting just a little bit too close to the sci-fi movies and art and life symbiosis that I bloviated on in the previous post. Makes you kind of uncomfortable.

Art imitates life, and life imitates art

I wanted to write something about the symbiotic relationship of life and art. Guess what? There's 1,250,000 writers who have already explored this, as per google. In-depth. Make that a 1,250,000 + 1. So what's left for me to do? Link to them, of course.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life - Oscar Wilde
A little detour here, if I may. The words writer, tragic and destined all come to mind when you say Oscar Wilde. While many would argue that he was horribly wronged, I would say that he breathed and lived and died the life and death of a writer. Envy him, if you will, but do not belittle his life and his writing with your pity.

"We try to live as art teaches. We express love in the ways of characters in stories. We speak in unfamiliar situations in ways that we've read characters speaking. We select the clothes we wear based upon an ideal determined by art (such as fashion photography). We take on the roles of characters we see in art, and judge others by those same characters." - Richard Nokes, Unlocked WordHoard
One more detour. By that standard, the concept of what a writer should be, what you need to write about, how you live and what is good writing would be called life imitating art. So any art you create, based on your life, is basically life imitating art, not art imitating life. And here I was thinking that you need to pour your life onto paper. Well, scratch that. You can skip a stage and directly write from the life of writers from the past. Uhh...All right. I'll say it one more time. Slowly. With bullet points.

• 1. You read about other writers and their books.
• 2. Over time, from these readings, you form an outline of what a writer should be, how you live, what you do and what you write about. You begin to follow these guidelines, and you become a writer.
• 3. Your writing sounds suspiciously similar to the stuff you were reading in the first place.

Forgive me for the rather batty detour. Just seemed like something worth exploring. Not so sure now, when I see what I just typed out. Anyway, let's move on to something a little less abstract....

"Imagine a gun that uses fingerprint scanning to prevent you from firing a shot...It's not science fiction, it is science fact....Scientists have taken many cues from what they have seen on screen....Artists are generally very good at reflecting human nature in the tenor of their times and sometimes that leads to very valuable insights....If you're not constrained by knowledge of things you can't do or think you can't do, I think you can come up with some really nice insights." - The Age, AU

Which means life, as the artist sees it, is the building block for the artist's depiction of the future, which in turn is the inspiration for real-life scientists to turn that art into reality. The cycle started with artists imitating life, and keeps going on simply because scientists watch films. If they used their own imagination instead, the art gets a boot in the rump. There's no way to turn this one around and say that life imitates art.

Life does imitate art, to the extent that we take inspiration for our lifestyle from art. The Jennifer Anniston and David Beckham haircuts are testament to this fact. But artists, and writers in particular, sorely need a reality check, if they think that their writing, or art, is any form of inspiration for life, or other writers and artists. It's just art inspiring more art. There is no life in there anywhere.

Books Which Sing And Dance

You're reading a book. Nice and quiet. Very peaceful. Lost in your own world. Just the book and you. A gentle breeze. Makes you sway left and right. Suddenly, you hear a voice, very close to you. He's saying exactly what you're reading on the page. You look around, startled, to see who else in the subway is reading the same book. Don't see anyone. But why is everyone looking at you? You have this sinking feeling low in your stomach. It's the audio in your book. Technology integration now allows you to publish books with music, games and video.

Kimberly Maul, writing for TheBookstandard.com, has an article about this. "Authors Add Music, Games and More To Their Books". Punch line? "So as authors grab their guitars, bust out the glue gun or get creative with games, look for even more multimedia book experiences to come out in 2007."

I think it was the books whch were supposed to sing and dance. Not the writers. Now they want the writers to do it. I thought grovelling at a publishers feet was enough.

In a related development, your book can now be an mp3 file played on a single-play mp3 player. Don't even think about asking me how that works. Besides, I have only question. You think bookstores across the UK might need something more than mere police protection if JK Rowling were to release the 7th Harry Potter book in her own voice along with the book?

Freelance Jobs 23rd Dec

Here's today's freelance jobs:

Seeking web content writer. Click here.
Translation project. Freelance translators wanted. Click here.
Writing and internet research for book project. Click here.
Transcription gig. Click here.

Uhh....Want to help someone else find a writing job online? Click here. This is getting ridiculous. Now they waht to pay people to help them find jobs online. There's literally thousands of blogs online which do the same as this blog, i.e. find and list online and freelance writing jobs. Why would you want to pay someone?

Men’s lifestyle magazine looking for writers. Click here.
Telecommuting industrial reporter wanted. Click here.
HR blogger wanted. Click here.
Ad agency looking for a freelance copywriter. Click here.
Entertainment mag looking for freelance writers. Click here. ( take a look at the email first )
SEO web content writer wanted. Click here.
Transcription gig. Click here.
$150 per article. Magazine calling for submissions. Click here.

Indie filmmaker video reviews wanted. Video blogger? Click here. The videos on youtube and other user-submittede video content sites are 'supposed' to be reviews. Now they want to do reviews of these reviews....

HACK/SLASH VS. CHUCKY - I'm a little pressed for time, but I still read it a couple of times before giving up. Anyone want to tell me what it's all about?

D. W. O'Dell, writing for Mediablvd.com, has a nice article which taught me a couple of things. One of them being 'Auteur Theory' and the other being 'Schreiber Theory'.

The Irving Wallace School Of Writing

The ultimate compliment you can give a writer is to want to live the life of his characters. Romance writers may not have much trouble accomplishing said feat. For other genres, it's very, very difficult to come up one, let alone more than one book where the reader starts thinking about being in the characters' shoes. One such author, who consistently bottles lightning, is Irving Wallace.

The Prize, By Irving Wallace : The hero, writer Andrew Craig, a flawed character, who is fighting innner demons caused by the death of his wife. Drowning in booze, he wins the Nobel prize, and the entire book weaves his personal struggles and those of the other nobel laurates with the machinations of the Nobel foundation. Overflowing with anectodes and facts about the workings of the Nobel foundation and the history of the prize, this book represents Irving Wallace at his best. Sadly, the only copy of the book I had was missing it's last few pages, so I never found the end. Which may be why I still remember every small detail about the book. The Swedish writer Gunnar Gottling, the wise old Count Jacobsson, the blonde Lilly Hedquist and even the place of her employment - Nordiska Kompaniet.

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The Hotel, by Aurthur Hailey : The story revolves around a hotel in New Orleans, The St. Gregory, again featuring a flawed hero, Peter McDermott, who is trying to banish the memory of a past mistake and redeem his career. Again, the entire book has expansive details about the inner workings of a hotel woven skillfully around the life of the characters. The high pressure work environment of the cooks, the use of brass or copper for frying pans, the inter-racial overtones and tensions in New Orleans, all push the reader, ever so gently, into the daily world of a hotel and its employees. Great research, great characters and a great yarn, all said and done.

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What are the common strands in these two best-sellers? A flawed hero, who starts off hiding or running from his past. Authetic and in-depth research into the entire profession of the protagonists. A challenge and a wrenching change in the life of the hero, followed by the fleshing out of the other characters. Ending in the redemption of the hero. One important thing to note is that while there are sad and twisted characters in both books, there is no villian. It is just the hero fighting against circumstance and for the betterment of his own life. Much closer to reality and something which readers can emphatize with. That is the Irving Wallace school of thought.

What's In A Title?

Which one would you rather click on : "Electric sheep invade Google" or "Installations in Google and Willow Garage". I rest my case.

For any of you abnormal netizens who didn't rush off to check out the invading hordes of electric sheep, a title will not sell your writing. It will only help sell your writing. It is, however, the main reason why a prospective buyer will pick up your book off a shelf or a search engine user click on your link. So, before you start writing that epic, pick a great title. Give it as much time as needed. The title tells the reader a great deal about the content. Think about the idea behind the book, or article, or blog post. Ok. So you've agonized over the title for your masterpiece. Now head over to google, search for the top 100 best-sellers which fall under the same category as yours, and write down their titles. Read the whole list from top to bottom. Now go agonize some more.

I agonized over the title for this post. "A Perfect Title"? Nah - Gives away too much about the contents of the post. If the title tells you everything that's in the post, why would you want to read the whole thing? So I nixed that one. And it was really tempting to use the electric sheep, but they really had nothing to do with titles, so I let them go by, albeit reluctantly. So I went over to google. Wrote down a big list of books for writers, which stress titles. Then I agonized some more. Finally, I came up with "What's In A Title?" Rushed over to Google to find a 118 million people already using said title. Aaargh.

Anyway, once you think have the perfect title, head over to the Lulu Titlescorer and have your title analyzed to see if it's going to hit the NYT best-sellers list. There's a 70% chance that what they say will be true. And the results of the analysis will indeed confirm your worst fears - Your book is going to be read only by your family, that too only if you promise them all sorts of goodies in return.

Writers - Desperate, Wretched and Drunk

It's a known fact that great writers are more appreciated after they pass on into the ether. The problem, as I see it, is that people want the writing, but not the writer. But I digress. I'm posting excerpts from articles written by drunk or loony writers. These articles are about drunk or loony writers. And I'm a drunk and loony writer. So if you're not a drunk or loony writer, it's probably best to quit while you're ahead.

Glenn F. Bunting, writing for CalenderLive.com, has an excellent piece on Clive Cussler, who had wide discretion over the movie script for his novel "Sahara." Now, after many costly revisions, he's suing over what did hit the screen. The best line? "I've worked with a lot of live authors," Hart testified. "The dead ones are easier to deal with."

NPR has an even better history lesson featuring drunk writers titled "Great American Writers and Their Cocktails". Money quote? "Alcohol is like love," he said. "The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off." - Raymond Chandler, as quoted in NPR

"They’re generally a desperate, upset bunch, writers. Stephen Kings and Danielle Steeles aside, the overwhelming majority of them do not earn their living from writing alone. Most have to teach or work at day jobs they despise, take journalism assignments they have no feeling for, or write copy for the back of DVD or cereal boxes" - Writers on film: Drunk, crazy and sexy - By Dave White, writing for Slate

"Crack out the violins. Proffer those hankies. I am now going to discuss why, by and large, writers are treated like scum. (Of course, you could argue that it's because writers are scum, but you have to get your own column to do that.)" - PeterDavid.net

"One little known thing about the legendary drunk writers of the world is that they did most of their writing while stone-cold sober. Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas on the straight and narrow (I know someone who wanted to go to a Hunter S. Thompson reading just to heckle the author; personally, I think that heckling someone who owns more than 20-30 firearms is a bit, perhaps, unwise). The problem with writing under the influence is that it makes it very difficult to concentrate on what you want to say. Or even remember what you want to say" - Upon Silence, PaulFrankenstein.org

"Friends, it is time to get drunk and type. NaDruWriNi - National Drunk Writing Night. Best goddamn idea I’ve heard in a while. I mean, commemorating it is a good idea. I’m not saying you need an excuse to drink and write. I’m not saying I need one, anyway...There is a big difference between a writer who drinks and a drunk who writes..." - Byrneunit.com

"In 1994 I started writing a novel. By this I mean I created a word document named 'My Novel', hit save and then got drunk with friends. The next day, terrified as I was to return, I created a second document, called 'My Novel - notes'. And in there I wrote down every idea that came to me about what might be in the novel. Only had one at first (“The narrator gets drunk. And then…well…hmmm")..." - Writing hacks (hacks for writing) - Part 1: Starting, By Scott Berkun, Scottberkun.com

"Fortunately for you, fat and drunk are practically two prerequisites for writing success. The difference between Ernest Hemingway and you is that he used his limited hours of coherency to write classic American fiction, while you spend your time touching yourself and ogling the showcase models on The Price is Right.
So, get your hands off the goodies and onto the keyboard, and you'll be on your way to lasting fame and a violent death by your own hand, just what every writer wishes for!" - John Warner, Mcsweeneys.net

And can we forget the all-knowing wikipedia? Has an excellent collection of "Iconic Drinkers" and their quotes. "In an appraisal of Lowry's masterpiece Under the Volcano, British novelist Martin Amis comments that, "To make a real success of being an alcoholic you need to be...shifty, unfastidious, solopsistic, insecure and indefatigable. Lowry was additionally equipped with an extra-small penis, which really seemed to help". - Wikipedia"

Ok. Nuff said. If you're not drunk, now would be a good time to hit the bottle.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Speaking in broad terms, what do Jewish readers want from books? Do they want images of themselves? Do they desire to take stock, to see where we are now and where we came from. Or are Jewish readers concerned with a quality of reassurance – that is, Jewish books that assert Jewish worth and attest to Jewish survival?" - A conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) about the meaning and destiny of jewish literature ( By Rabbi William Berkowitz )

Issac Bashevis Singer, born in Radzymin near Warsaw, emigrated 1935 to USA. He died in 1991. He won the nobel prize in literature in 1978. He has written many novels and short stories, including The Slave, Short Friday and Other Stories, and Enemies: A Love Story, Shosha, The Manor, The Penitent, and The Death of Methuselah.

" In one of his more light-hearted books, Isaac Bashevis Singer depicts his childhood in one of the over-populated poor quarters of Warsaw, a Jewish quarter, just before and during the First World War. The book, called In My Father's Court (1966), is sustained by a redeeming, melancholy sense of humour and a clear-sightedness free of illusion."
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993

Singer lived in a time of wrenching change, uncertainity, fear, acts of great courage, pain of seperation and the stripping away of the veneer and facade of civilization. Rich material for a writer. So of all the writers who contributed to Jewish literature after the end of World war II, what is that made Singer a great writer and a nobel prize winner?

I read through the entire interview, I read through the nobel biography, and then went back to the interview and re-read the whole thing, trying to find a thread, some common principle which finds it's way into all his books, something which I could use to grasp and define.

"BERKOWITZ: Here are two statements you have made that seem to contradict each other. First: "I write about Jews. It is not that I think that they are special, but that I know them best." And yet you also say in a very beautiful passage: "I do think that as a philosophy, Judaism has unrevealed treasures which no other religion has, and it has never before happened in history that a nation has been exiled for two thousand years, then come back and formed a country. This proves that the Almighty has a purpose for the Jewish people."

SINGER: I meant this idea of Jews as topics for writing, the idea that writing about Jews will create better literature than writing about other people. In this respect I think we are not special. A great writer will always write great books, and a bad writer will write bad books, even if his people were ten times as special. So this is the reason there is no contradiction. When I said special, I meant special as far as literature is concerned, and there are people who are special for literature." - A conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) about the meaning and destiny of jewish literature ( By Rabbi William Berkowitz )

He writes about what he knows best, what he has personally experienced. Secondly, Singer did not try to impulsively inject greatness, as a reaction to the persecution, in his books, about the Jewish people. Third, he believes the greatness of the Jewish people, as a rich and endless source of material for writing, and he is thankful for that, for being born a Jew. It is this balance, this anchor in reality, while maintaining a pride in his Jewishness, that catapulted Issac Bashevis Singer from being just another Jewish writer into a great writer.

Bad Internet Journalists! Bad!

I was torn between the current title and this one ' Festival of the cubicles', which refers to Julius Caesar, office holiday parties, drinking, gambling, feasting, masters and slaves swapping roles and "singing naked". You can read the tantalizing tidbits here.

Anyway, there's this great article by Chud.com writer Devin Faraci, which goes a long way in clarifying the roles played by and relationships between online journalists and the print media.
"You know whose names Ryan should be listing? The people who come to junkets and don’t ask questions. The stringers who are sent by big magazines to sit there with a tape recorder and bring back the answers to the questions I asked and then get paid more money for it than I do. I have seen answers to my questions turn up in major magazines and newspapers again and again. I see many print folks at junkets who never speak, and then go back to the newsroom, write up a piece based on my work, and pay off their mortgage." - By Devin Faraci, writing for Chud.com

True. True. A lot of the time, I feel I could do a much better job than most of the bloviators who sit on their perches in the big MSM mags and churn out columns, which, if written by me, would probably be greeted with hoots of derision. I mean, other than the real reporting articles which contain interviews and facts assembled through 'real' journalism, the opinion columns are basically a big pile of rubbish.

I urge Devin Faraci and other like-minded internet journalists to stage a putsch and take over the print media jobs. If these bloviators in the MSM start feeling the rug being pulled out from under their feet, that would accomplish two things. More respect for internet journalism and better columns by the print media, who will be forced to do some real work, to keep their jobs. Sad part is, in order to do this, a few good people will have to quit internet journalism and get print media jobs. But I'm sure they'll be willing to sacrifice themselves and get a job in Time or the NY Post, for the betterment of internet journalism.

Freelance Jobs 21st Dec

Here's today's freelance jobs:

Freelance writers wanted to write articles about freelance writing. 'Nuff said. Click here.

Got an idea for a business book, but too lazy to write it? Or maybe you're just not good enough a writer. All right. All right. Click here.

Web 2.0 blogger wanted. Click here.
News organisation looking for freelance writers. Click here.
Online writers needed for blog and forum posting. Click here.
Ghost writer wanted for blog artiles. Click here.
Looking for a freelance writer for art project. Click here.
Music fan? Can you review bands? Click here.
Script readers wanted. $10 per. Click here.
Websavvy copywriter for female oriented social website. Click here.

NYC company looking for a freelance copy writer. Telecommuting ok! Swell. Great gig, if you can get it. But something tells me that half of the millions of blogs featuring work at home jobs for writers will be posting this gig. Anyway, Click here.

Freelance writers needed. Click here.

Comedy writer wanted. Someone, a cyber celebrity,uhh...ok, wants help to spruce up his speaking with a few rib-ticklers. Don't want to give away too much here, but if you check out the email of the poster on google, you'll find this is something entirely different. The word "hustler" comes to mind. Click here.

Been doing too much writing lately. Fingers are starting to crack under the strain. Maybe I need some botox treatment. I'm serious. BBC has an article out on how Botox could help writers cramp. "The toxin is usually used to treat wrinkles, but the Dutch research suggests it can also stop muscles in the arms, hands or fingers seizing up." The English are a crazy lot. These are the guys who popularized lunch-time breast enlargement treatments.

Finally, if you want to launch a freelance writing career in 2007, click here.

With the holidays here already, in case this is your last visit here before Christmas, wish all of you and yours a Merry Christmas.

A reluctant author of bestsellers

I write a lot on the net. For myself, for clients, for websites. Anything for a few bucks. Most of it is ghostwriting. Meaning I don't get the credit. Only the money. What happens if something you ghostwrote becomes famous and a best-seller? Well, I just read the story of Leslie McFarlane, better known by the pseudonym, Franklin W. Dixon, author of the Hardy Boys novels. He only got money for ghostwriting. $100 per book, books which sold and are still selling millions of copies across the world.

"During that time, he saw an advertisement for a children's book ghostwriter, placed by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Among other best-selling series, it produced the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift.

Under the pen name Roy Rockwood, McFarlane subsequently produced seven novels in the syndicate's Dave Fearless series, then moved on to write more than 20 Hardy Boys novels.

For most of these, he was paid a flat fee of $100 per book and, although the novels sold many millions of copies and were translated into 50 languages, he earned no royalties.

"In his diaries," Brian McFarlane said in an interview last week, "my father talks about having to write another of those cursed books, in order to earn another $100 to buy coal for the furnace." " - Globeandmail.com

Absolutely heart-breaking. Especially if you're a writer. A ghostwriter. Just think about it. Millions of dollars, all that fame. And he can't say or do anything about it because he was given a 100 bucks for each book.

It would take an especially kindhearted and gentle soul not to harbor any bitterness over such deals. Until today, I was kindof proud whenever I saw my writing on the web. Not this blog, but things I've ghost-written. Gave me a secret pleasure that the site owner was posing as an expert on the subject, and it was me that wrote it. Not anymore. Now I know that it's ok to be a good ghostwriter. But it's not ok to be a great ghostwriter.

Free Blogs, Free Money - Come and Get It

Frank Sennett, correspondent for SpokesmanReview.com, writes about the new free blog 'OpenServing' project from Wikia Inc.

"Bloggers who sign up at OpenServing.com receive free bandwidth, storage and software — plus 100 percent of ad payments generated by their sites. The service will "allow people to create news, opinion and communities on any topic they want," Wikia CEO Gil Penchina said at the conference."

Ok. So how is any of this different from blogger? Which, by the way, has an update:
"The new version of Blogger in beta is dead! Long live the new version of Blogger!
P.S. The old version of Blogger is not dead, but it would like to retire for a little while... maybe go to Hawaii or play World of Warcraft all day? It begs you to let it play World of Warcraft all day."

That's the message I see when I log into blogger. I think Google has too many nerds and geeks working for them. Google needs to throw all these bums out on their butt at least twice a year, maybe for a month or so, and let them roam around in the real world. Might give them a fresh perspective when they enter the Google world again. Not to mention that it would make them a lot less loony.

And since everyone has a blog, it figures that Santa would want one too. "'Karen told me you had a blog like the rest of us,' wrote contributor Poopie in a post. 'I have ALWAYS believed, even when that little twit in first grade said you weren't real.'"

And there's some new blogging terminology to remember from the Sydney Morning Herald : Blog streaking - "Revealing secrets or personal information online which for everybody's sake would be best kept private."

Uhh...I have a cold, I wipe my nose with my finger, and rub off that greenish mucky thing on my finger under the table. Does that qualify as blog streaking?

The Chosen One

In the last two weeks, there's been tons and tons of ink spilled all the way from DC to New Hampshire, to Chicago. Barack Obama, the subject of endless bloviating by both left and right pundits. Is he going to run for the Presidency? Will he win? No he won't. Why not?....On the other hand maybe he will win. Why? ..... Hillary will destroy him. And if by a miracle he does survive, the right-wing is loading up their cannons to take him down. And oh yes..Those big ears. It's a viral epidemic on the blogs about Obama's ears.

Newsweek even has a few polls and stats to back up their point of view. They spout the Bradley effect and what not, to argue about whether white male voters will, in fact, vote for Obama. Ok. All right. Here's my suggestion to all the bloviators. Take a step back. Close your eyes. Head back a little in time and go over to Chicago, Illinois. What happened? Both his primary opponent and his Republican opponent in the general election went belly-up and threw out a red-carpet for Obama to walk over from Chicago to Washington. Then he goes to the Democratic convention in 2004 and suddenly the next day the whole world knows who Barack Obama is. In 2006, he goes to New Hampshire for the first time and a roomful of hardboiled political operatives swoon over him.

The sea is being parted to allow Obama to pass. Name one senate campaign where a challenger wins without a struggle. It doesn't happen. Yet it happened - For Obama. Now there were at least half a dozen candidates on the Democratic side vying for the nomination. Obama decides he wants to take a crack, and what happens? Kerry shoots off his mouth, Mark Warner cites family and withdraws, Evan Bayh throws in the towel, Russ Feingold says he's happier in the Senate, Al Gore simply dissapeared out of the picture, which leaves Hillary against Obama. And believe me, it will be the last man standing. Not the last woman. On the other side, just in time for Obama's candidacy, after twelve years in power, the Republicans self-destruct, lose both the Senate and the House and are in for one more massive thumpin in 2008. So Obama won't be counting chads in Florida or checking the exit polls in Ohio.

In case you think I'm batty, think about this. The Presidency chooses the President. John McCain can change his colors as many times as he wants, and Al Gore could become one of the most respected statesmen in the world, but one thing they will never be, is President of the U.S.A. If you take a straw poll today asking people to choose a candidate between George Bush, John McCain and Al Gore, how many people do you think would vote for Bush? Even his own father would probably vote for McCain. That, however, does not change the fact that George Bush is the President. What I'm trying to say here, is that, Barack Obama is going to be the President, regardless of any pros or cons, not because he wants to be one, or because he's capable of being one, but because he's been chosen by the Presidency to be the next one.

NOLA Writers - Post Katrina

Along with the entire city, Katrina also washed out a lot of literary history and inspiration for writers. Of course, that was less of a loss than the houses which the writers lost. And what's left in New Orleans for writers to write about? Katrina, of course. The literary output of NOLA writers now has a single-minded laser like focus on non-fiction accounts of the devastation and the tragedy of a city drowned and a culture lost.

Jason Berry, writing for NPR has a column which is an excellent place to start an exploration into the life of Katrina, the hurricane: "Jed Horne's Breach of Faith has been praised as one of the best books about Katrina so far. A veteran editor of The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, Horne delivers pathos in the survivor stories, and shows a shrewd eye for detail." - Katrina Books Shed New Light on Disaster

This article in Slate, New Orleans writers pen city's rebirth story, discusses how "Katrina is an unavoidable touchstone for New Orleans writers as they get back to their craft. Since the disaster, it's been largely a subject of nonfiction, such as Douglas Brinkley's tome "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" and "The Five People You Meet In Hell: Surviving Katrina," Smallwood's tale of French Quarter denizens who stayed put while most citizens evacuated."

There's one thing I have been wanting to let out of my chest for a long time. On the day that Katrina struck, I was glued to my screen. Alternating between the weather reports and trying to find updates on the net, I knew about The Times Picayune's staffers bravely struggling on inspite of the power outage and breaking glass.

I knew about the levee breaches a few hours after they happened, from the Bayoubuzz blog. I can't find the link right now, but as the next few days unfolded and I watched with growing anger the administration's claims that they had no way of knowing about the levee breaches in time, the one thing that kept hitting me again and again was "How could I, sitting thousands of miles away, in front of a computer screen, know about the levee breaches in a few hours, and the entire official machinery not know about it for a full day?" I still don't know and probably never will. Maybe I will, if I were to read a few in-depth books about Katrina by writers who were in New Orleans, and have first hand accounts of exactly what happened.

Saatchi Gallery - Do You Stuart?

Here's what The Independant, UK has to say about Stuart
( http://saatchi-gallery.co.uk/stuart ) :

" Charles Saatchi created a sensation in the art world by putting the work of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman Brothers on display. Now he's looking to find the next generation of talent with 'Stuart', a non-profit online gallery for students with something to show. In its first week, 600 have signed up - and the website has attracted 20 million hits. Watch this space"

And this is one time I can't say anything bad about an NYT article. In fact, I don't even want to. "The brainchild of the London-based advertising magnate and collector Charles Saatchi, this social networking outlet - a kind of MySpace knockoff for artists - is causing something of a sensation, boosting traffic at the gallery's Web site overall to more than three million hits a day....
"I've done a couple of commissions, but this is my first sale," Ms. Murphy said. Yet what she likes best about Stuart is not so much the commercial rewards as the ability to gain access to other students and their work." - New York Times

I know a winner, as well as any other netizen, when I see it. Stuart has all the ingredients necessary to hit the stratosphere in internet marketing and traffic - An untapped visitor base, hype, free publicity from major MSM outlets and perfect timing. Every year, there's a new winner in the internet traffic wars. Myspace, friendster, youtube...Stuart? You tell me.

I have a feeling about this one. It's supposed to be for artists, but tell me, can you resist the urge to create something and upload it? It's the same urge that Youtube brought out among internet users and changed a lot of things about the internet. It's not just about video sharing anymore. It's about an outlet for your creativity without all the agony which artists face. It's an outlet for citizen journalism. And Stuart is taking it one step further by mixing up art, multimedia and the internet. The only problem is the hosting. On a high speed broadband connection, their pages crawl and groan before loading. Understandable, considering the tremendous pressure an NYT article can bring, but still no excuse.

Showcase your creativity. Explore a virtual gallery of art. Make friends, learn more. All the things that artists do. Without having to live the life of an artist. Do you Stuart?

Freelance Jobs 19th Dec

Here's today's freelance jobs:

NLP copywriter wanted. Click here. Whoa! Hold on. What the heck is NLP? Afraid I had to look it up. NLP is 'Neuro Linguistic Programming'. If you want to know more about NLP copywriting, this is the best document on the entire www :
"NLP isn't a replacement for good copywriting. It's a turbo boost. Meeting a person on his or her own level by using familiar words puts YOU in control of the communication almost immediately....Here is the basic principle of NLP as I understand it. There is no mental resistance to an idea you perceive as your own. And whenever any of us engages our imagination, we think we came up with the idea ourselves. So it must be great!!! It aligns with our own beliefs so it's unconsciously accepted as being the truth and you act as if it's true. So NLP always prefers to presuppose that changes can be made quickly and automatically." - The Raw Truth About Persuasion and Copywriting

Green blogger wanted here.
World Social Forum researcher wanted. Click here.
Freelance writer for pregnancy / parenting wanted here.

Seeking feminist bloggers. I thought feminism was so yesterday. It's quite fashionable for women to want to quit a career and be a full-time work at home mom. best of both worlds. Still, if you're hung up on standing up for some percieved or otherwise rights, click here

Is there even one freelance job here which is not just for women???? Here you are:

I've always believed that writing scripts for Hollywood was a fool's errand. You waste your time and energy. Burn your creativity and at the end of the day, you have to go and sit in some greaseball's office and beg for him to take one look, just one look at your script. I believe, though, that this one job combines the best of both worlds. Click here for a script writing job without the hassles.

Freelance writer? How do you afford healthcare coverage? If you do know, click here. Well, at least he ain't on welfare...

Looking for SEO article writers. Click here.
Looking for submissions ( $10 per 5000 words and $5 per poem ). Click here.
Copy writer needed for IT company. Click here.
Website participants wanted to provide content. $30 for 5 topics. Click here.

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Update on a job I posted in the last freelance jobs post for 16th December. Searchsays.com is looking for a lot of online writers. They pay 0.75 cents per 500 characters and here's how you start:

1.) Register for an account and sign in - http://www.searchsays.com/trn/womsearch.php
2.) Sign the Freelance Agreement online (you can only get there when you're logged in) - http://www.searchsays.com/jobs/fwcontract.php
3.) Make sure you read over the guidelines - http://www.searchsays.com/jobs/freelance.php

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Time Magazine Person Of The Year? You

"Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you." - Time

Cool. Nobody ever nominated me for anything before. Suddenly I'm on the cover of Time, as the Person of the Year? I told my mom blogging outta the basement was gonna be a sure hit one day. And here we are. Time needs to be given kudos for being the first MSM mag to publicly acknowledge, without a snide reference, the growing importance of blogging and new media.

And pretty slick marketing. Write this down. This one cover issue is going to ignite and re-ignite the debate about the importance of blogs and the Time article will be endlessly quoted and linked to, by both the MSM and by the blogs. It'll probably end up as Time's most famous selection, ever. Sheer marketing genius.

Update: Google news now has 387 news links writing about this. So far. Here's the few choice selections:
Time's Person Of 2006: "You" As In YouTube ( Playfuls.com )
You're on the cover of Time! ( CNN-IBN )
TIME'S 2006 'PERSON' BLOGS ON ( NY Post )
You ought to be congratulated ( The Age )
Do-it-yourself heroes ( Melbourne Herald Sun )
Person of year? Look in mirror ( Chicago Sun-Times )

And while I have no idea what Steve Young is babbling about, it's still more fodder for the Time publicity machine.