The End of an Affair

First of all, I want to thank all the scummy feedscraping sites. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON ANY OTHER SITE BUT SECONDHANDKARL.COM you are reading STOLEN CONTENT. This shit pisses me off, but I know I’m showing up on a lot of other sites out there. They do NOT have my permission to use my words, so come over to Secondhandkarl.com and read it properly. Thanks.

Thanks to NYCWD for Snacking on me yesterday. I’m honored to be amongst such gloriously wacky folks.

It felt very strange on Sunday morning to wake up and not have to worry about a noon deadline for my column in today’s paper. Perhaps it seems like no big deal to have a newspaper column. I mean, I already write something every day for 2HT, what’s another 550 words? But it’s not always easy coming up with those 550 words, believe me. Plenty of times I was up against the looming deadline with no idea what I was going to write.

At any rate, until I get another writing gig, I’m going to stay in the habit of coming up with a column every Monday. Here we go.

Lately my love/hate relationship with social networking sites is taking a serious turn toward hatred. I’ve been using these things since they started, way back when I was still living in Dallas, even. Remember a site called Six Degrees? Yeah, I was in on the ground floor there and it really did nothing for me, except suck a lot of hours out of me racking my brains to think of every person I knew.

Then there was Friendster, which is still around (and yes, I still have an account that I never use). But really, let’s face it – the first one that really broke out of the gate was Myspace. And I signed up on Myspace, too. It’s been over four years I’ve been part of that site and I never have gotten around to customizing my profile page, design-wise. I think most of the designs there are absolutely awful, but my thoughts on design are fairly well-known already. I’ll stick with the plain-white version, thanks.

But the thing that appealed to me about Myspace in the beginning was the ability to really reconnect with people you hadn’t heard from in forever. Sure, I connected with a few people, but Myspace has since soured itself greatly. It’s not about connecting with people any more; it’s about getting as many friends as possible. And spam…lots and lots of spam.

I rarely visit that site full of terribly gaudy and flashy animated GIFs. What brings me there 99% of the time is an e-mail message that informs me I have someone new that wants to be my friend. So I go to the site, knowing darn well that I’m going to get there and mark whoever it is as spam. Sure enough, it’s some nubile 19 year-old shoving her butt into the camera. Her profile is sparse, though she may have many “friends” and she wishes to share her REAL web link with me, where she’s allowed to have nude photos. By this time, I’m almost suspicious. Does Candy REALLY want to be my friend? Is she really so turned on by me that she feels a compulsion to remove all her clothes and set up a profile on an adults-only dating site? Hmm, I don’t know.

OK, I marked it as spam. No girls my daughters’ age want to get naked with me. And quite honestly, I’d feel like some sort of pervert if I were dating anyone their age. I don’t know how the famous Hollywood studs do it. Jack Nicholson is, what, 98 years old now? He’s still hanging with women 50 years his junior.

My point is that I’ve lost all the joy from using Myspace. The same can nearly also be said for Facebook, which started out to be a grown-up version of Myspace. I thought that was appealing, being the anti-Myspace. But now? It’s an incessant series of requests from your friends to add applications to your Facebook profile page. People are constantly wanting to Kiss Me or Bite Me to make me a vampire, or play Scrabble, or Ask Me Questions. There are a billion applications on Facebook, and everyone wants me to add every one of them to my page.

My solution a few weeks ago was to remove nearly every Facebook application. Now I also IGNORE all requests for me to add a new one. Right now I bet I have at least 20 requests for these useless things. No more. The madness must end. I’m just waiting for the spam to show up on Facebook, too. I’m *this* close to deleting both Myspace and Facebook accounts.

And I’ll never feel sexually desired by 20-year-olds again. *sigh*

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I’m Not Going to Say I Got Dooced, But I Did

I hate mentioning her by name because, while I acknowledge she is a good writer and an accomplished photographer, I just can’t be bothered reading Dooce’s journal. (Why? Because of her no-comments policy, see yesterday’s long-ass post about that.)

But the fact of the matter remains that Dooce inadvertently coined the term “dooced” when she got fired from her job some years back because of her blog. That is, by and large, why she’s so immensely popular now as a so-called blogger. She got in on the ground floor, so to speak. Now anytime someone gets fired because of their blog, they call it getting Dooced. I’m here to change that. From now on, we’re going to call it getting Karled.

That’s right, in case you missed it on Twitter yesterday afternoon, I have been fired as a columnist for one of the local newspapers in town. Why? In short, because of this post. I have been reproducing my regular Monday column here on Mondays pretty much for the last 2-1/2 years I’ve been writing the column. Not any more.

It wasn’t the column itself that got me fired. I spoke with my editor on the phone yesterday afternoon to ask what was going on and to apologize. Yes, I apologized because it was never my intention to hurt her or anyone else at the newspaper. She told me that they had been planning to run the column in next Monday’s paper, but she needed to get permission from other editors first. Understandable.

I certainly never intended to come off as slamming the newspaper. But as my editor told me, it wasn’t the column that they had a problem with. It was the COMMENTS on the post. She was on vacation all last week, so really didn’t have a chance to talk to me about why they didn’t have any people at the charity event. They DID make arrangements to get photographs from some of the people that were in attendance, but couldn’t do the overtime necessary to send out a full-time photographer. I jumped the gun and made assumptions I shouldn’t have made. For that, I take responsibility.

I always took great care not to mention the newspaper by name here, and I never gave out my blog URL in the column, either. It’s a family newspaper and I would never send people to my blog indiscriminately because I swear like a sailor lots of the time.

Nevertheless, someone at the newspaper found my blog and brought it to other people’s attention on Monday. Having worked in close-knit cubicle environments before, I know how quickly word spreads like wildfire in an office. I’m sure it didn’t take much time at all for my blog to make the rounds. At least it’s a nice, new pretty blog design.

I’m upset, yes, for several reasons. For one thing, I should have been more judicious about my comments on the blog. I should have also called and talked to my editor before posting Monday’s post and leaving subsequent comments. But I’m also kinda pissed because what the fuck? This is MY blog and I have the right to say whatever the hell I want to say. I never expected or asked anyone at the newspaper to look at my blog. On purpose. I realize I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

I certainly wouldn’t have made those comments on the newspaper’s web site. That really WOULD be unprofessional. But on my own blog? Bah.

I’ve been Karled. So yeah, I’m looking for more writing gigs now. If you know of any, please let me know. I promise I’ll be a (relatively) good boy from here on out. Maybe I just shouldn’t run any future columns here, to be safe.

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The Column That Will Not Appear in Today’s Paper

This is NOT my weekly column from the local newspaper. I know you’ve come to expect my columns here on Mondays, but this isn’t one. Instead, I give you the column that I submitted to go in the paper. I’m sure you sleuths will see why they’re running a rerun of mine in its place.

I’d never been to the Red and White Ball before, the annual gala event that helps raise money and support for the American Red Cross. Saturday night, however, I got my chance, thanks to some very unlucky circumstances. My friends, Greg and Tracy Smith, both had medical emergencies in the past couple of weeks, and both required surgery. Thankfully, they’re doing just fine, but they still weren’t able to make it to the Red and White Ball. When their tickets were up for grabs, my mother and I were given the tickets to go.

Naturally, I don’t have a tuxedo, but I do have a suit, believe it or not. That’s right, I don’t always (necessarily) wear shorts and a tee-shirt. I got all dolled up – I even showered and shaved – and so did Mom and we headed out to Highlands Ridge for the ball. I had a great time and deliberately left my camera at home. I figured there would be several photographers there from the local newspapers. I always see those “Around the Town” photos in the paper the day after a big event. But no, there weren’t any photographers, except for the professional who was there, snapping portraits of couples.

My mother outed me. When Vicki (another friend and one of the organizers of the Red and White Ball) was wondering why no one showed up to report the event, Mom pointed at me and said, “You’ve got a newspaper person right here ” Vicki squealed with delight and dragged me over to meet Phil Attinger, the Public Relations Director of Highlands County’s (and Polk County’s) chapter of the Red Cross. While I always have a pen in my pocket, I didn’t bring any notepads with me, since I wasn’t expecting to WORK during the ball.

I talked to Phil for a while and he told me a great deal about our local Red Cross. Most people, he said, think they’re safe right now since we haven’t had a hurricane since our trifecta a few years back. And let’s face it, when you think Red Cross, what do you think of? Hurricanes, floods, blood drives, and CPR training. And yes, the Red Cross is there for all of those things, and much more.

Did you know that in the last nine months, the local Red Cross has been helping a great deal on 35 separate house fire incidents in Highlands County? Some of those are multiple family fires, some are apartments, some are houses. All of the people involved need help, whether it be need of shelter, clothes, groceries, rental vehicles, and the list goes on.

“There’s no crystal ball to tell us when a disaster is going to happen,” Phil told me. That’s why the Red Cross is always in need of donations. You can’t predict a tornado or a house fire. They just happen. Of course, people should have disaster preparedness plans, storm kits they can grab and run, a support group they can count on for contingencies. But the Red Cross is there for all of those unexpected events, just in case.

“We always have volunteer positions available,” Phil said. “We’re in need of caseworkers to work on Disaster Action Teams, always need help with clerical work, trainers to teach CPR and first aid, and many other positions.”

To see the Polk and Highlands County Red Cross web site, go to polkcountyFL.redcross.org and maybe you can give a little something. In the meantime, I’m celebrating my win of six items in the silent auction. Sea World, anyone?

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