before and after

1 Comment Posted on Uncategorized, Writing

Readers’ Expectations 1: Chris Harrison Shirtless, The Remake of Starry Night, and The Personality That Causes Cancer

Straight up, what did you hope to learn about here?  If I was someone else, would this all fall apart?

What makes a post popular is not necessarily when a lot of people read it the day it’s published.  What makes it popular is when random people do Internet searches and stumble on it, day after day.

For example, by far my most read is Capital Punishment, In Theory, which at the moment has had 889 direct hits.  That means nearly a thousand readers have come to my site because they wanted to know more about the morality or immorality issues of executing criminals.  So it’s safe to say that more random people have come to my site to hear my thoughts on capital punishment than for any other specific reason.

Statistically speaking then, the other main reasons people wash up on my shore is to read my thoughts on The Bachelor, LOST, healthy eating/organic lifestyle, and oddly, mustaches.

Honestly, when I write, I never think about what the reader might want to read about.  No offense.  I write about what I personally would want to read about it.  Then from there, the readers can sort out what they feel is worth reading past the first paragraph of.

My definition of successful writing is the ability to write about anything (from The Golden Gate Bridge (I Wish You Would Step Back From that Ledge, My Friend) to an old abandoned amusement park (Canyon Land) and make it interesting and intriguing and to hopefully reveal some kind of truth in the process that wasn’t obvious before.

But far all the times the metaphorical spaghetti has stuck to the wall, there were also times it didn’t.  I have made it easy to revisit my most popular posts with pages like Best of 2009 (statistically the most popular posts from last year) and Reruns (a collection of all my different series), but today I will celebrate my least popular.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t popular the first time they were published, because many of them were.  It just means no one has read then since.  In other words, they evidently don’t have much replay value.

Bottom Ten Posts of All Time

Mixed Reviews

The Friendship Police: Why the Heck Not?

Dr. Deja Vu: The Interstate to Memory Lane

The Modern Day Tortoise

I Was Born in a Small Town

Of Mutts and Men

Did You Know?

Ghosts in the Machine

Dr. Deja Vu: Before and After

The Edge of “Me Too” Culture

That was fun.  But before I’m done with this subject today, I also need to acknowledge some of the random Internet searchers who came to scenicroutesnapshots.com, only to be disappointed.  I’ve seen all kinds of random search terms that people have typed in to get to my site.

Surprisingly, only a few of them have been kinky.  And a few were deliberate pranks, like “Nick Shell that I dated in high school”.  I never did find out who did that.  But just in the past few weeks, grazing the floor of search terms, I have definitely come across some oddities:

“Chris Harrison shirtless” I’m sorry, sir or ma’am.  I know you really want to see what’s underneath that tuxedo, but he’s the host of The Bachelor, not a contestant.  You wish.

“Buzz Aldrin shirtless” Okay, same person.  Chris Harrison was one thing, but leave the 80 year-old astronaut alone.

“where can I get a remake of Starry Night?” You mean a reprint?  If you want a remake, I’ll do it.  I haven’t painted since the 4th grade, but I can make this work. I won’t even charge that much.  Fifty bucks sound good?  It may end up looking more like the abstract version of the original, but I’ll get you your remake.  Nice doing business with you.

“to increase your salary, simply mustache” Alright, buddy.  Yes, it’s true.  I can actually help you with that one.  Men with mustaches have higher salaries (Must Not Mustache).  But never, and I mean never, say the words “simply mustache” again.  Not cool, man.  Not cool.

“Lynyrd Skynyrd song that goes- oh that third eye blind” I’m no Casey Kasem, but I think you’re referring to their song “That Smell”:  “Oh, oh, that smell.  The smell of death all around you.” The actual lyrics were a lot different than you thought, I know.  Yes, because “third eye blind” and “that smell” sound so much alike.

“personality that causes cancer” That would be “the Kate Gosselin”, but I haven’t written about that yet.  Good for you for reading my mind, though.

“road turns into mouse” Oh, I get it.  I’ve heard about guys like you.  Look, it must be pretty cool to test different kind of marijuana for pot dispensaries in Denver for a living, but maybe you should cut back on your Internet searching while you’re “working”.

1 Comment Posted on Nostalgia, Uncategorized

Dr. Deja Vu: Before and After

There is something magic, mysterious, and forgiving about the past. Like a black hole it just absorbs our former stupidity and ignorance. As long as others can see we’ve put enough time between the present and the past, then much can be dismissed. Learning from the past is the respectable thing to do. It’s current and constant immaturity that people have a problem with.

In 1989 in 3rd grade the snack my mom always packed for me for the designated “snack time” was a Kudos bar. If I opened the healthy candy bar a certain way, the wrapper would stay intact so that it looked like there was still the Kudos bar inside. So everyday, I would offer an empty Kudos wrapper to one of my friends. They would anxiously grab the bait, and it was funny to both the giver and receiver every time.

After a few months I had done this trick to literally the entire class, so I tried it out on the teacher, but with a twist: After she realized there was no Kudos bar inside, I would actually give her the Kudos. (I carefully took it out of the wrapper and placed the bar inside my cold metal desk.) She laughed when I pranked her. Then I reached into my desk, pulled out the naked Kudos bar, and said, “I’m just joking. Here it is.”

The look on her face said enough. But she simply just said, “Oh no, you keep it. I’ve already got a snack. Thank you though.”

Who wants to eat a chocolate covered granola bar that an 8 year-old boy touched and sat in his desk that hasn’t been cleaned out in six months? I realized it was a faux pas right away. It was awkward and I hoped she would forget about it as soon as possible.

By the time I got to 4th grade, I was able to say to myself, “Okay, that Kudos bar incident was a year ago. It’s a new year, you’re a new person, time to prove you’re not immature anymore.” But year after year I would do things that embarrassed myself, and each time, I would hope that the next year I would finally “get mature”. But 20 years since the Kudos incident, I still haven’t reached that perfection I’m looking for.

And in the last 20 years, I’ve buried not only socially awkward events, but also personal offenses. Times when I’ve insulted and hurt people I care about. Of course I didn’t mean to. But I did the crime, each time. And after the sincere apology, and the sincere forgiveness, there’s still the sincere “let enough time go by so that hopefully both of us pretty much have forgotten about it” issue. Easier to forgive than to forget, no doubt about it.

We know that time is a healer, but how much time?

To the familiar proverb, “we hurt those we love the most” I add “and embarrass ourselves in front of those we don’t know as well”. I’ve tried, and I just can’t embarrass myself in front of those who really know me. Because they really know me. They’ve seen me do enough goofy stuff that it’s no big deal anymore.

But it’s interesting that it takes love being mishandled or abused to cause real hurt. And also that part of growing up and becoming mature is learning from mistakes involving hurting those I really care about. Whether it’s training for the norm of social behavior, or whether it’s learning “how to love” another person, it takes spilling the milk and cracking a few eggs.

Making mistakes and not learning from them reveals a fool. But turning around in a new direction shows repentance and maturity.

The irony is that while it takes someone that I love to truly hurt them, it’s their returned love that helps heal the wound faster, the way a Band-Aid and Neosporin do. I can insult a stranger or acquaintance, but I can’t truly deeply hurt them. So there is no love needed to heal a wound in that case.

Weird how that works.

“I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me, so I can say this is the way that I used to be- there’s no substitute for time.” –John Mayer (“Split Screen Sadness”)