Then I started getting return emails. Mailing lists telling me my message had been posted. Out of office replies from former employers, co-workers, recruiters, clients, prospects, random people I don’t want to talk to, people whose email I have but who don’t know me, ex girlfriends, and other random people.

This phenomenon needs a name… like “Address Book Rape.” I feel so violated. And how can you remedy it? Write everyone an apology email? “Hey, uh, sorry for sending that invite out, I’m a clueless tool.”

On the plus side, I’ve reconnected with a few people who had lost my address and some people have been very grateful for showing them StumbleUpon. But that DOES NOT make it OK.

Stop Address Book Rape!

Anyway, the newspaper characters feel contrived and one-dimensional. The dialogue makes me nauseous and reminds me of network TV dreck. And I just can’t buy the whole McNulty serial killer storyline. It’s just like, really? After episode 3 I find it more tolerable, but it still bothers me. At least I care about what’s going to happen, if only because it would be so stupid to see McNulty and Lester go to jail over this. I can’t see the same for The Sun; I find myself daydreaming of Omar coming back to Baltimore to shoot up the newsroom. Something…anything… just do something interesting… make me care.

The Wire has always been about Show Me, Don’t Tell Me. This season it’s the opposite. It feels so preachy and in your face.  And so the veil of trust has been broken. It happened with The Sopranos in season 3 (IIRC) with the Columbus Day episode. I saw that episode and I thought “man, that was stupid. And contrived. What were they thinking?”

And the veil of trust disappeared; I no longer believed everything I saw. I lost my faith in the show and the characters. I began to notice other faults with the show and I began to loathe the characters. Especially those mobster criminals. The Sopranos always intrigued me but I never felt sympathy for them at the end; only disgust. The plot was still compelling but I couldn’t get lost in their world anymore.

I never though that would happen with The Wire. I believed everything about The Wire as truth; I took it all at face value, and I don’t think that was naiveté. I mean Baltimore really is a fucked up place, I lived there for two and a half years and I still go there almost every day. The show was so real.

But then the serial killer came along and there was the Sun story and I lost my faith and trust in the show. Now it’s just a very real (and still very good and interesting) show. But I can’t get lost in that world anymore and I can’t sympathize with the characters. They are loathsome criminals–the police, the government, and the drug dealers. A morass of socialist decay that has wreaked its havoc on Baltimore.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. That we fall in love with these characters and then wake up at the end and realize that they’re evil or that the institutions are wrong.

OK, now I’m the one preaching… 4 out of 5 ain’t bad for what’s still the best TV show I’ve ever seen.

For now, I’m starting my own search engine optimization company, and the website has a blog as well. I’ll be posting there weekly if you’re interested. I do not intend to compete with the “big boys” of the SEO blogging world, but it’s a good way to express my thoughts on web marketing and keep my site content fresh.

If you’ve missed my tales of real estate woe, then you’ll be happy to know that in the past 3 months I’ve had a roof collapse and a tenant that, 6 months after notifying me of her plan to vacate, has still not left the property. The law’s delay… Hamlet did forgot one worldly woe in his little soliloquy–the hourly rate of a decent attorney!

So there you have it; I’ve been gone for a while but I came back with a new blog, some real estate drama, and even a little Shakespeare.

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about “what is this blog about.” Because that’s really a central question to any successful blog. Is this a blog about my daily life? Funny things going on? My real estate misadventures? Improv? Marketing? Liberty and being a libertarian? All of those things? That’s way too many topics for a successful blog.

And so I think it’s a good exercise for anyone to go through, to try and create a blog. So they can think about what their brand is and what they want their identity to be and what they can offer to the citizens of the internets.

The irony is that I’m never short on things to write about. I have about 50 draft topics waiting in the queue. But every time I go to write one of them, something comes up. A little mental resistance. I’m not really sure where that comes from but I’m going to listen to it now. I may start up again in a month or a year from now. As I get more involved in online marketing I may choose to start another website that deals with those specific topics. In the meantime, if you’re a friend or just interested in what I have to say, you can stay subscribed to the RSS feed.

And Hey, Micheal is doing improv! Back to his roots. “You can do a scene where you pretend you have a car” like when I used to do scenes where I pretended I had a job. Or that I didn’t live with my parents.

“In the Shrute family, we have a tradition where when the male has sex with another woman, he is awarded with a bag of wild oats.” I’m so on board with you Dwight.

Ok and what’s with the squirrelly Amish type running around?

And no…not telemarketing Micheal. You sell out. I so wanted to see him doing improv, or nonimprov. An improviser pretending to be a nonimproviser, improvising. If that makes any sense. Seriously, how much will it take to see this? I’m pledging $50.

Apparently the squirrelly Amish type likes to throw shit around! Mose!

Dwight’s reading Harry Potter to Jim and Pam. Mose likes the hobittses, they have his ring, yes?

Poor Dwight, moaning in the night. Can we get him his oats already?

I see Ryan is now actively attempting to be a complete douche bag. “Hey guys, how’s my favorite branch!?”

And up pops the toolbar. That’s what she said.

If I had money problems, would I do this? Hm, not a credible signal Michael.

“But you need to access your uncrazy side.” God he’s so smooth. “Slow down. Think it over.” So smooth.

“Lord Rupert Everton. A shipping merchant who raises fancy dogs. That’s the life.” Indeed!

Runaway train never coming back… and it ends a bit slowly but good to see Dwight refinds himself. And I just found his blog…

These are the contents of 1985 Dwight’s Time Capsule:

1. A dehydrated beet sculpture of myself holding a very small metal box meant to represent a miniature version of the time capsule. I was very much into beet miniatures when I was teenager. I did not, however, know my “BeetDwight” would shrivel into dehydration. That occurred because of science, not intention.

I worked my ass off for 6 years, put some cash in the bank, and set off to see what else was out there in the world. What I am finding is completely rocking my world. Life has never been better. I have walked through Penguin colonies in Antarctica, climbed mountains, layed on some of the best beaches in the world in Brazil, and have stood in front of wonders of the world. I am just getting started…. Currently less than 20% of Americans hold Passports. If you do not have one, go get one and see what else is out there. I promise you will not regret it.

After tackling South America, he’s headed off to Africa in January for another six months of amazing travel stories and videos. I’m going to help him take his current blog, which is now hosted at Blogspot, and set him up with his own domain, a clean and powerful WordPress blog, and some effective ways to get his message out and build up an audience.

As I work through the improvements in his blog and his online marketing, I’ll post updates here and hopefully this will serve as a guide to moving from blog hosted by a third-party to a more serious and professional blog, hosted on your own site.

In the meantime, I definitely encourage you to check out what’s going on in his life at his old blog, soon to be new and improved. For some intense reading, check out his adventure with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca.

I’m very thankful that my current work situation doesn’t involve endless meetings. It does involve a lot of creative collaboration and ad hoc discussions, but nothing of the “sit in the conference room with 15 other people and watch PowerPoint” variety.

When I worked for the government I sometimes spent hours a day in long, boring, and mostly pointless meetings where two people would take up 90% of the conversation while everyone else sat around trying to stave off sleep. Some days I would be in meetings for four hours out of the day.

I used to think of a girl I had a class with in college. On the first day of class she told the professor that she was narcoleptic, so hey if I fall asleep, it’s just my condition. She never fell asleep in class and I don’t know if she was really narcoleptic but it seemed like a brilliant ploy at the time. And I would sit there at the one-hour mark of some status meeting thinking oh God why didn’t I use that narcolepsy bit when I started working here.

So why not unmeetings? Just send off an email and say “hey, a few of us are going to talk about the marketing strategy for the client at 10am. Stop by if you have something you’d like to share.”

Dwight vs. the self-aware computer. I love it. The singularity will not be televised, it will be IM’d to your desk.  God this show is great.

Congratulations! Your outstanding performance in this season’s Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball PLUS competition has made you the potential recipient of one of our League Winner Prizes — a championship bobblehead or t-shirt commemorating your achievement.

The bad news is that Maryland state law prevents me from claiming my prize…

As stated in the Official Contest Rules, to be eligible to receive a prize in this contest you must be…a U.S. resident NOT living in a jurisdiction where the contest is void (Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Vermont, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey, Arkansas, Tennessee, overseas U.S. territories, possessions, commonwealths and military installations, and where otherwise prohibited by law…

If I wasn’t a libertarian before, this would’ve convinced me. I want my bobblehead!

But being in a miserable job that pays well; that’s really tough. Because every day your mind is wondering why you are here, in this boring office, surrounded by people you can’t stand, doing meaningless work. Why would you, logical you, subject yourself to such torture? Because the money’s good, your mind thinks..it must be. It must be amazing and magical if you’re willing to sacrifice your happiness for it, right?

So you become obsessed with the money and start to place irrational value on it.  And it gets really hard to leave because your mind’s convinced that the pain is worth it. And you start looking around for something new, and oh doesn’t that look interesting!

But you’re entry level and you’re not going to make as much. And what if the new job is even worse? What if you’re just as miserable, except now you’re only making half of what you made before. Wouldn’t that make me look like a big idiot?

Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle. So be careful what job you take for the money. Unless of course it’s “fuck you” money. You should probably take the fuck you money.