5 Easy Steps to Success on LinkedIn

Wanna advance your career and move up on the corporate ladder? Then you've come to just the right place! These 5 easy to follow steps will increase your clout, connections, hireability, and likability on LinkedIn -- the world's premiere job related social media network!

1. Your profile has to look professional beyond all else. No slack-jawed selfies of you in the shower clearly showing you're taking a picture of yourself. You need a definitive picture that will stand out from the rest! That is why I recommend heading over to the Bitstrips app on your iPhone or Android device and to start constructing an animated version of your virtual self! 
2. When you connect with people be sure to tailor your request messages, personalize it! Nothing says a need to connect more so than expressing your undulating lustful desire to be in their professional connection network!
3. Maintain professional relationships. Loosely translated -- nicely phrased and wittily constructed cryptic and puzzling comments that address how much you need them and can't live without out them will go a long way to your success in the business world and on LinkedIn!
4. Be sure to introduce connections. So, when you're at a party remember that it's always nice to be introduced by a friend or a mutual acquaintance to make interactions a little less uncomfortable. Essentially, If Tom likes Sally at work be sure to let Sally know Tom's most deepest intentions in a private message addressed to her, from you and blind carbon copied to the rest of your LinkedIn contacts. That way everybody is introduced to one another!
5. Last and certainly not least -- write recommendations! That way others will in turn do that for you. It's equally beneficial. Nothing more sounds of success than an established colleague singing your praises or you helping them by voicing theirs. For example, if Richard has a great way with numbers illustrate that with a useful analogy alluding to a well known film. Make it entertaining. Here's an proven example that works every time; since Richard likes to hit the casinos on the weekends and always wins some money then be sure to illustrate how he fashions himself as the Rain Man, counting cards and duping the casinos as a result of his amazing mathematical wizardry. 

Well, there you have it; that wraps up our insightful take on 5 easy steps that will increase clout, connections, likability and hireability for your online presence. See you next week and have a great one at that!

A Brief History of TED (not the person)

Smack dab in the middle of this thing we call the digital age and the limitless possibilities of the advent of the internet -- it has led us to many intellectual and communicative possibilities that would have otherwise not been realizable til now.  A phenomenon worth noting are the TED talks.

The official TED site states:

"TED was born in 1984 out of Richard Saul Wurman's observation of a powerful convergence among three fields: technology, entertainment and design." 

But in 1984 TED didn't have the technology it had today:

"But not  until between 2001 - 2006 they had reached more than one million views."

The significant impact TED has had on ourselves as a global consciousness is huge! The fact that we can spread philosophical, technological, existential, psychological, sociological ideas are big for the intellectual community. Because of this collective collaboration on groundbreaking ideas, intellectual discoveries have never been easier. We are no longer held in a small circle of thought but rather opened up to a larger intellectual world view. And, in this way, we don't have to feel so alone in how we feel about ourselves, others and within the world we are participating:

"TED Talks proved so popular that in 2007, TED's website was relaunched around them, giving a global audience free access to some of the world's greatest thinkers, leaders and teachers."

And, in 2012:

"TED Talks celebrated its one billionth video view. As TED Talks continue to be watched around the world, with an average of 17 new page views a second, the TED, TEDActive and TEDGlobal conferences continue to inspire, motivate and thrill attendees. In 2014, TED celebrates its 30th anniversary in Vancouver, Canada..."

TED talks could be comparable to that of the theaters of days past, before television or power, where people came saw, enjoyed and relished in the fact that new knowledge could be attained, acquired and pleasantly acquiesced in the form of entertainment -- but now we have the world as a stage.

The Greater Philadelphia Opple Topple Musical Festival

If anybody is going to be anywhere on June 13th to the 15th then they better make sure they are at the yearly held Opple Topple Music Festival located at Winding Brook Farm on 3014 Bristol Rd., Warrington, PA. 

Just to gauge the scope of this massive event listen to what they have to say:

"Opple Topple Festival [has] been involved with a variety of well known venues including O.U.R. Fest, Endless Music Mountain Fest, Live Stock, Stir Fry Music Revival, as well as being friends with Jibber Jazz, the All Good Music Festivals, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and Bonnaroo."

Not only will this be one huge ass rockin' party -- this will be: 

"...a weekend long event, with awesome music, entertainment, food, crafts, vendors and more. There will be kid safe zone provided for families, and cold water available for regular ticket holders."

Bands this year include well known local names such as Pure Jerry, Happy Dog, Jayar Bass, Major Front, Hot Beer, Dirk Quinn Band, Doylestown School of Rock and Rocktapuss among the many others that will make your time there kick-ass awesome! 

Also be sure to visit Opple Topple's Facebook page for all the much needed details!

All that glitters may not be gold

Tensions in the last few weeks have risen as "Randy California," says Bloomsburg Businessweek, "has sued
the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and their record company for copyright infringement."

They also go onto say, "The 40-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on May 31, is itself a tribute to Stairway‘s iconic status: Its section headings are in a typeface recognizable from Led Zeppelin album covers, and it cites as a cause for action the "Falsification of Rock N’ Roll History.""

As surely as the Battle of Evermore copyright infringements shall go on and on, probably after Page passes, then "all that glitters" probably won't be gold -- just legal papers and hassles.

Jimmy Page's iconic Led Zeppelin looks like it may go down like an actual lead Zeppelin.

The Beastie Boys aren't the only ones who are suing Monster Energy

Today looks like another landmark battle against Monster Energy drinks.  Yesterday it was the Beastie Boys and today it is Charles Oat who in 1979 at Wilson's Saloon in Norwich, Connecticut concocted what we all know as the Irish Car Bomb made up of Guiness Stout, Bailey's Irish Cream and Jameson Irish Whiskey.

Allegedly, Monster Energy and Five Hour Energy had produced a promotional video illustrating the insane effects of dropping a Five Hour Energy into a can of Monster Energy. The video that was posted on YouTube logged more than 30 million views in one day and has now been taken down. People who saw the video reported the American Caffeine Bomb drinkers as literally going into seizures during extreme sporting events seconds to minutes after consuming the drink.

Due to the extreme virility of the video it can still be found on some obscure internet channels that we cannot link here for fear of legal action. But, we were able to get a screen shot from a YouTuber who sent us this image:

All in all, it looks like Monster and Five Hour Energy are gonna have some extreme explaining to do along with dodging the petroleum companies as one Twitter user commented to the YouTuber's photo:

@Nik_Bertino wow, what a beautiful/efficient reactor we have here. I assume the petroleum companies have put a price on your head 💀💀💀

— ☯bradley^_^☯ (@gladly_bradley) June 3, 2014

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Calling all artists, poets, writers on any media platform. We must acquiesce the modern communication methods—

...where's my fucking coffee? Get me my coffee! Excuse me. Eh, hem....

—A change is upon the world of the arts and self expression. We shall unite to form the new multimedia social's circuit—

...will you just shut up?! Trying to concentrate...

—Let's change the world one artistic vision at a time!

...would you interrupt someone if they were trying to save the world? Seriously?!

Don’t eat spaghetti!!!

Spaghetti is cooked in a pot usually with boiling water. Usually more beneficial to put cold water in the pot and then boil. Don’t use warm or faucet-hot water because then the water is conditioned and you just don’t want that. Bad stuff all around. I usually put heat at full or number 11 ;) ;) one more than 10, right? ;)

After shit boils I turn the heat down to the number 4. Not sure what that would be in degrees or radians or however people measure temperature and stuff. Probably not necessary to know the exact measurement. Probably could eyeball it like throwing a basketball through a hoop but some people like to be specific though. I don’t know but I wouldn’t wanna be that specific.

When the spaghetti reaches al dente or just a firm bite-ness to it then it’s all good. But spaghettis is high in carbs. I’m on an all protein diet. Violating that would be like sacrilege. Something like cursing in a church on a Sunday. You just don’t do it no matter how silly it may seem. I just will not compromise. Even if I was dying, and I said, “Docta, Docta, give me the news…” and he said, “You gotta eat carbs to live, son”—I still wouldn’t. That’s how serious, dedicated and committed to this diet I am. Probably wouldn’t be able to live with myself afterwards if I did anyway.

I know, I know, you’re probably asking why I loathe spaghetti with such great disdain. Probably ‘cause one day the spaghetti peeved me. Spaghetti is a waste of itself. Disgusting in the full sense of the word. The experience that came with cooking spaghetti one day instilled such an awful experience in me that I nearly died as a result but ironically didn’t die from it but would probably so if I had to eat it to survive. I don’t know how I work sometimes. I just do. Anyway, don’t eat spaghetti ever again. Sometimes it’ll fall through the strainer and you won’t be able to eat it all.

Sometimes it takes an understanding to know something, eh?

I certainly wouldn’t term myself old—quite yet, but I will say it is, whateva “it” is, is what you make of it, right?

So, why do I say that?

Think for a moment a life in which every day is awful, just awful like the awful where you hate if someone accidentally breathes on you wrong. Usually like when you give that awful glare at someone who accidentally did and they say, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to move your hair with my breath.” That is a bad day.

So, you have this dreadful day; the coffee creamer is curdled, a dish broke, the humidity is making your hair frizzy and your wallet is M.I.A. All is okay though. Need not be that bad. Though that’s pretty shitty.

I know, I know, you’re cussing up a storm because I am such a dick. I am making you relive those terribly and dreadfully awful memories. Really, they’re awful. Awful like worse than seeing the ending to Old Yeller, right?! Sorta like “I wanna cry” awful? Good. Hold onto that feeling.

Alright, so here’s the deal. It really isn’t that bad. Really. It isn’t. That bad. But I guess in the moment it is. So, for sake of argument, we’ll leave it at that.

Here’s the scenario: you have a meeting in an hour and your outfit didn’t dry upon putting the laundry in and it was timed to dry just as you were to leave. No outfit = no meeting = loss of job. Shit’s really on the line for that one outfit. Who would’ve thunk the end of your entire living would be the result of a burnt out fuse. Sorta sucks. Don’t it?

Lucky for you it’s not the “end of the world”. Yep. You heard it here! The world will not end if you lose your job—just to put some perspective on the matter. Turns out you’re not some world dictator. Because you didn’t make an important world peace speech—riots will incite and hundreds of thousands of innocent people will DIE!!! A new world war starts and 90% of the population will be wiped of the face of the earth. That is how a burnt out fuse will destroy a living, really.

*wipes sweat from brow*

I say that to say that nothing is as bad as it may seem to be. I know, all of that for just that one phrase; sometimes it takes an understanding to know something, eh? :-D

The changing of the night show guards

Interesting to note that David Letterman and Jay Leno have or will be stepping down. This is a lot bigger than one may think. This is a change in the media mainstream entertainment. A paradigm shift. An entertainment shift. A shift in who will be entertained as the “general” populace and who the media industry thinks the general populace is.


So what is the general populace? Why does it matter? Why should we care? Plainly, I don’t care to watch. I don’t know. I just find very little worth watching on a daily basis. No hate towards that type of entertainment it’s just that I don’t care to appreciate it for what it’s worth, so sue me ;-) Or: I just don’t care for things that a general populace would care for. Then, why are you reading? Why should you care for what I have to say? Simple: an outside perspective in such an in-vasive world can be difficult to find. That is what I wish to provide.


In any event, the changing of the guards is just what it implies. There is something that needs to be guarded. Entertainment and news and the night show personalities are doing just that. They make life easy to live and palatable with their jokes. They make life easy and give us an escape. They are entertainment personalities that have a sorta common ground on the basis of humor, intelligence and views towards life. Thing is television is dying in the traditional sense. The myriad of news outlets that exist now are innumerable. Especially with the advent of the internet.


Due to the internet and the many forms of expression that are taking place like Instagram with photoblogging, Twitter and microblogging, Facebook and, well, you know, these are huge, huge ways for us to express, create and to form a social dynamic that is global and on some levels larger than life; and it’s just now evolving; it’s becoming an organism if it is not already. Social networks are life and promote life. A new form of self-expression is prevailing; social networking may be threatening or working for entertainment and freedom of speech as a whole: something that needs to be held secure and guarded but that may be just to “wag the dog”.


The common masses will still flock to the televisions but the amount of attention new media outlets, i.e., internet related media, will gain is tremendous and will not stop growing—at least not anytime soon. A Pandora’s box, if you will, in discovering a new human consciousness, a new way of being, a virtual being and that virtual being acts as an existential mirror of sorts. Something that indicates, subtly, how we are, what our basic needs are mutating into especially from Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs we all learned in that introduction to psychology class…internet is now at the bottom, the base.


In short, a transformation is happening and we are at the epicenter. The changing of the guards is just one of the signs that as Bob Dylan says, “…the times they are a changing…” and they are. It’s just a matter of what direction that change is heading. And, if guards are implied to be part of this collective consciousness, then what are they guarding, what needs to be so secure? Is it the safety of us or the safety of them? Far be it from me to surmise, but I will say if security for the collective is the dog and tail is the guards, just remember the tail doesn’t wag itself.

Absurdly rational conclusions

Yo! Peeps! of the digital world?! What’s the word crazy birds? Nah, I ain’t that corny, but I try. Don’t hate. You know you like it ;-)

Anyway, peeps are are like little yellow things. They can be put into a microwave and heated and also explode. That’s fun. Don’t know ‘bout you but I like destruction. Who doesn’t? Like smashing glass just to hear it break. But, that’s not just for the sake of destruction, that’s for the sake of a beauty, an appreciation towards destruction that creates a beauty, in turn, a sound, in essence, that resonates something more beautiful than destruction for the sake of destruction…