Entries Tagged as 'Kids and Teens'

Give Until it Hurts

Sunday night tornadoes ripped through the tiny communities of Parkersburg and New Hartford here in central Iowa. At this moment the death toll stands at 7 between the two communities, with at least 50 injured. There’s a roundup here.

The reason I’m writing this entry is in the hope that some of my visitors might be compelled to donate to the victims of this tragedy. The local chapter of the American Red Cross’s website is here, and they have instructions on how to make donations.

I have donated what money I can, and my wife and I are taking over a load of children’s clothes tonight that our daughter has outgrown.

My brother’s ex-mother in law lives in Parkersburg, and although the tornado missed her house, the entire town is shut down regarding electricity, water, and gas.

My brother’s ex-wife’s cousin is the manager of the Pizza Ranch, which was mentioned in the story above. She was at work when the tornado hit, and was responsible for ushering her customers and employees into the bathroom. A car landed on the roof, and the building collapsed, but nobody inside was injured.

Several of my co-workers are first responders with the local fire departments and paramedics, and the stories I heard at work today would have been more at place in a group of soldiers returning from Iraq than from small town firefighters.

A tornado is devastating under normal conditions, butwhen one strikes such small, tightly-knit communities, the horror is multiplied exponentially. If you can give anything, please do. Every little bit helps.

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Doin’ the Things a Spider Can!

Amazing Fantasy #16 (Dec. 1995). Painted cover by Paul Lee.Image via Wikipedia

This is a quick post just to say that I’m alive. While I was browsing the Library of Congress’ blog, I came across this awesome post: The Library of Congress acquired 24 pages of original 1962 drawings from “Amazing Fantasy #15.”

Amazing Fantasy #15 was the first appearance of Spider Man, and spawned one of the most prolific comic characters of all time. Although I’ve never really been a big fan of Spider Man, the thought of seeing these pages in person makes my fatty little fanboy heart dance with glee.

If the Library of Congress deemed these pages worthy of inclusion, perhaps that means comic books have finally become a ‘legitimate’ art form.

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Breaking the Silence

It’s time to break my self-imposed silence. I know I haven’t posted in almost two weeks, due to illnesses making the rounds in my household. This cold, damp spring has been killing all of our health, and some days checking my email is a herculean task. I’m on the mend though, and received my first affiliate marketing check yesterday, so I’m feeling revitalized.

With my renewed sense of purpose, I realize that I need to focus on what’s important: making money. As it stands, I need to focus on the prize, and blogging isn’t going to get me any closer to it.

I know I’m not going to make money by blogging, and that has never been the intention. If I want to make money by writing, I’ll do it in a different fashion than by writing about how to make money. There are no ads on this site, and I plan to keep it that way. This is my personal blog, and I have no intention of whoring myself like John Chow, or others like him. Not that I have anything against what he’s doing, but that isn’t me.

This blog is still going to be a dumping ground for information I need to keep an eye on, but I don’t think I’m going to be blogging per se with any regularity, since I feel that my time and energy needs to be focused on making money, not just watching others make money and talking about it.

Last night I watched the 2002 John Leguizamo movie “Empire.” It’s the story of a drug dealer trying to go legit after he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. The story has some parallels to my life. Although I’m not involved with anything illegal, I want to legitimize my life and what I do.

When I was a kid, I was continually beat about the head constantly hearing about my ‘potential’ and failure to live up to it. I’m smart, testing somewhere in th 140 range on my IQ. I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I am smarter than your average bear.

As soon as my teachers found that out, I was constantly lectured about my potential. The problem is, none of them, not a single one, actually told me how to realize my potential. I later learned that the majority of education majors graduate in the bottom 50% of their college class.

Anyway, I’ve had the onus of realizing my potential saddled upon me for most of my life. The fact that I work in a factory and am wasting my fabled ‘potential’ means that I’ve become the black sheep of my family.

I make decent money, but I have to kill myself to do it. I come home every day bleeding from dozens of sheet metal cuts, metal slivers everywhere, coated in grease and hydraulic oil, coughing out the remnant of burning heavy metals that I’ve had to breathe in for 8 hours.

That’s why I decided to try affiliate marketing - so that I could enjoy life, and eventually rub everybody’s noses in my success. The check sitting here on my desk proves that I can do it, as long as I put my nose to the grindstone.

I’m going to finish this post with a monologue from Empire. The truth in his speech inspired me, and helped me to clarify what’s important.

We all know selling and competition, that’s what this country’s built on.
It’s all about one thing: making money.
Money, baby. Simple as that.
Everything else is just bullshit.
Money is why people come here from every country in the world.
It’s what the American dream is all about.
You think people come here from all over the world to live in East New York…
in Harlem, the South Bronx…
because of the beautiful views, because of the fucking quality of life?


For everybody– everybody– money is what life is all about.
Getting it, keeping it, losing it, holding it…
needing it, living it and dying for it.
You have to look like you got it, whether you do or not.