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How To Get Attention, or: ‘As You Read This, You Feel an Irresistible Urge to Go On Reading!’

We all want attention. As children we crave the attention of our parents. Later in life, we want to be seen and noticed by friends and family. And when running most any type of business, we must attract the attention of our potential customers.

But how do you get somebody’s undivided attention? When you were an infant, you got attention by screaming and crying. Then your parents knew you needed your diapers changed. As an adult, you can try using the same method to get noticed. Sure, you will get noticed – but in a negative way!

On the Internet, every website that is selling something has the need to be attention-grabbing within seconds; to make the visitors read about their offer rather than just clicking away. Some are then tempted to use the infant method of getting attention: screaming and yelling.

Popup-windows that pop up in your face and obscure the page text you’re just trying to read, is one example. Flash-generated intro’s that stop you in your tracks and say “Heeey, wait – before you read about our products I’ve got this f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c visual effect to show you…!” is another example of attention-grabbing contraptions that actually defeat their own purpose. They visually yell and scream at you, and draw your attention to the fact that you’d better spend your precious time somewhere else.

Then there is the type of web page that plays some sound effect the moment you arrive. Either it is a piece of music (always just the kind you hate!) or a recorded sales pitch.

Oh yes, then there is the Blinking Text… which blinks at frantic pace, just right to trigger an epileptic seizure.

One of my websites is called “The Hosting Finder”. Primarily, it offers some reviews of carefully selected web hosting companies. I am not selling anything on this website, and so I do not feel it would be appropriate to use a hard-selling jargon in my introductory headline. Right now, it reads:

Finding a Web Hosting Provider That Will Take Good Care of Your Precious Web
Pages … Can Be Confusing

(I then explain how I researched the web to find good hosting services based on un-biased customer ratings rather than hype.)

Recently, a marketing consultant offered to look at this website and give me some feedback at no cost. I accepted, and after checking my landing page he declared the headline to be “generic and bland”. Instead, he suggested the following:

Want An Objective ‘Client Feedback’ Guide To Help You Find A 100% Trustworthy, Inexpensive, And Complete Web Hosting Service Provider (Based On Survey Results, Not Marketing Propaganda) — With All The Options You Need To Run Your Web Site Smoothly And Successfully?

Avoid The Hosting Nightmare Of Trying To Keep Your Site Live And Running Smoothly… Stop Wasting Time And Money In Costly Bad Service

In my reply, I thanked him for his trouble. I also pointed out that this flood of words might not be the optimal way of building confidence in my integrity as the provider of impartial reviews on web hosting.

Maybe I am wrong, who knows. Perhaps I should start yelling and screaming just like everybody else? But I just don’t like the idea of doing that. I’d rather hypnotize people into reading my texts. Some marketing gurus advocate this approach. Here are a few examples of how you’re supposed to hypnotize people:

1. As you keep reading this ad copy, you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all the benefits of our product.

2. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, the less you think about delaying this important purchase.

3. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.

Well, don’t you feel compelled to reach for your wallet right now?! These examples are not intended as a joke; they are seriously trying to persuade people. And maybe they are, although I personally find them more amusing than hypnotizing. – I’ll make a pause here; I just feel I have to go out and buy something! :-)

OK, I am back. Time to finish this little essay on how to get attention. Oh, you have read this far? So I have managed to keep your attention then! I did it by … no, I won’t give my secret away. You’ll have to read my Special Report, which I’m selling for ONLY $97. But hurry, this exclusive limited special offer is expiring, and will always expire, at midnight; whatever day you happen to read this! :-)

Anger Management – How it Can Exhibit Itself in Inappropriate Behavior Between Siblings

There are many situations that can affect the relationships that siblings have with each other, not just the relationship they have as a family unit. What if a parent purchased a gift for one’s child as opposed to the other, then talk about it in front of the other children. Therefore, that situation just created jealousy between the children, when one child feels inadequate next to the other. When one child feels jealous of their brother or sister, it can be the seed that lays the groundwork for anger to build up an increase over time.

The only way to defuse this anger is for the family to sit down and express their feelings, but if no one is willing to sit down and discuss it than what occurs is that the anger keeps increasing until you learn to express it in inappropriate behaviors. What happens is that one child feels inadequate next to the other and he gives them power to fight with their siblings and though the behavior is inappropriate. Following will be different examples of situations which can create jealousy which over time will transform itself into anger and you will not be able to hold back the finder annual mystery your siblings later in life.

What if for example you grew up in a home where there was only two bedrooms, but the room with only large enough for two beds, and your parents had to make room for a bed for you as a child. So instead of buying you a bed they purchased you a couch that could be turned into a bed at night. Then only after you became an adult deed you have the opportunity to purchase your self a bed to sleep in. Unknowingly, you harbored reassessment car with your sisters. Then as an adult you had the power over your sisters and you mistreated them due to your own anger towards them.

You had always been close to your mother since she let you get away with missed reading your sisters constantly, then as an adult she gave you control over the finances and you used this power inappropriately by verbally abusing your sisters and then also physically fighting with them. Here is a hypothetical situation where such a behavior can show itself:

Your mother asked for your assistance in buying a bed for your sister who live with your mother. Your mother had a bed for herself, but needed a bed for your sister when they moved into an apartment. Even though you never acknowledged that the fact that the reason that your sisters for having a bed, you now have the power to make sure your sister didn’t have a bed to sleep in, in her room. Your mother expressed an interest in buying a trundle bed so there would be another bed for a guest to sleep in; instead of saying to your mother– don’t do to her what you did to me, she is a 40-year-old woman and deserves to have a double or queen sized bed to sleep in, you will assist your mother in buying her a trundle bed for her room. Then many years later when your mother decides to buy a second matches for that bed, you go with her to pick out a mattress and box springs which you make your sister pay for. Then instead of allowing her to sleep in the bed she purchased, you have a physical fight with her, that is, while she is holding the mattress in her hands you are pushing her backwards against the railing of the bed. Someone who can not recognize this is inappropriate behavior is mentally ill and deserves to be hospitalized– especially when they make the comment– oh I think she was just upset because we were leaving town.

This is someone who is in total denial of their own in adequate feelings, and only understand the power and satisfaction they have by mistreating a sibling, especially since they also feel anger over the fact that they worked hard and retired on almost $4000 a month while their sister only receives under $1000 among and also receive food stamps, because she wants to receive all the handouts just like her mother did years ago and was jealous of her siblings and in-laws. This is also an example of how the apple never falls far from the tree, when children repeat their parents behavior towards their own siblings.

Anger management means that you are willing to accept the fact that you have anger towards someone else and are willing to change your behavior so you can have healthy relationships both with your siblings and with your friends, because you also exhibit jealousy and anger towards your friends when you talk about them behind their back. Remember, you first have to wait knowledge and your inappropriate behavior before you can change it.

The Rights of Squatters

“The finder of something which the owner was probably sorry to lose, cannot take it up with the intention of withholding it from the owner when he comes to inquire. But when the owner does not appear, the finder has a right to retain it for himself.”

– Samuel Von Pufendorf, “The Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen,” Book 1, Chapter 13

I had always believed, before I was adoringly aquianted with the philosophy of Humanitarianism, Rationalism, and justice, that squatting ought to be a right, and not a privilege. To see so many vacant houses, standing side by side like disease, and to hear of so many unemployed and so many houseless as though they were the worst lot of humanity — to see the present state of conditions as they exist, I had always believed that squatting is a right. On the one hand, there is an army of unemployed, houseless, starving, cold, freezing, without even the least sympathetic touch of humanity, not reaching out because of their pride, and they exist in the multitudes. And nobody can be blamed other than megacorporations, whose assets exist in the trillions. Trillions of dollars, I say! As a close friend of mine tells me, in New York City, they can invest to have enormous television sets sitting on the sidewalk, yet every apartment is infested with vermin and cockroaches. We have dilapidated buildings, beggars on the street, homeless children without even enough clothing to pass the decency laws. All this misery, this poverty, and this crime! Oh, and of crime! What shall I say of it! When men are grown up in an environment where everyone around gathers their paycheck in the form of a possessed wallet or a confiscated purse, where their fathers are robbers and members of thieves guilds. Should we expect the children to grow up any differently? Should you take a child from the ghetto, and honestly ask him that he will grow up to be the CEO of a megacorporation, only that the megacorpration will be one that exploits and does nothing but destroy the environment and violate the rights of indigenous peoples!?

Oh, what destructive, foul, cruel world has been wrought by that thing which we have called greed, that interest of a few to generate wealth!

Our children are raised in this environment, our adolescents grow up in these schools, drugs become a commen part of life. Crime, drugs, poverty, misery, these are not things that are common parts of just life. These are common parts of OUR LIFE. It is something that we must deal with EVERYDAY. It is not something that we can escape.

Let us speak of crime. No man, who has held virtue as a great thing, who has described justice as the most blessed of all things, no man will ever condone theft. I agree. There is nothing more unjust theft. That is to say, there is nothing more cruel, thoughtless, and heartless than to take from one man what he has earned through his hard, sweating labors. I admit all of this. We are all in agreement here. But, there is something that must be considered beyond this.

Then, consider a child who is born in the ghetto. Imagine that he has no father, imagine that his mother is a crack-cocaine addict. Imagine that his only education is avoiding truancy officers and breaking into cars to steal CDs and coins. Imagine that he turns fourteen years old. At this age, he starts selling crack-cocaine. He starts selling reefer in the halls of a school that he never attended for education. Imagine that he falls in love with a beautiful girl, but she’s of a different color. He takes her dinner, and his enemies decide to deliver a surprise. He is left there crying, holding her bleeding body, thinking of what it was like for his mother to read his stories in bed before she became addicted, thinking of the beautiful color of her eyes before she was lying lifeless in his arms. At the same time that he feels the death of her body, he feels the life of her memory, and he refuses to let go. The drivebay was enough to break everything he thought he knew about life.

Now let’s consider another child. Consider someone who is born in the wealthiest of familiest. He goes to school. He meets friends. And among the students, he takes a particular liking to a beautiful girl. He believes, in the sincerity of his heart, that the mascara, the jewelry, the genetics that placed certain features at certain places, was enough to make her beautiful in his light. He decides “to go steady” with her. He falls in love with her, and decides one day, in his college years, that he will marry her. She throws her arms around him, and tells him in all sincerity, that this is one of the most beautiful moments of her. They spend hours together, spending time and going through catalogues of marriage ceromonies. At the same time, the earlier pair is preparing their funeral. The ghetto boy never had a chance to propose to the one that he loved. All that he was allowed was to look at a face that an undertaker did his best to resurrect.

The ghetto child will continue his life, selling dope, and trying to get on welfare. All his life, he will be wearing a ring he obtained from a claw machine, and telling everyone that he got it from his lover. Disagree with him, and he will be incited to violence. He’s walking down the street, selling crack and marijuana to everyone who has the green for it. The sidewalk is his turf. He feels the concrete underneath his feet as he goes further in his life, and almost for a moment, he feels that this will lead to the end of his life. A driveby comes by and he ducks. His crew his hit. Big G, Master Tar, Mister Kill, all of them go down. But with a keen eye, this one student of life ducks. All of his best friends are hit in the most fatal wounds, while he suffers a mere shot in the arm. Ambulence arrives. Not something that is at all odd in this neighborhood. He is patched up, while one of his friends is pronounced dead on the scene. By the time they all arrive at the hosptial, he is the only one alive. On one sad rooftop watching some story, still scarred with a hosptial patch, and drowned in tears, he puts a gun to the side of his head and pulls the trigger. He felt that, without friends who have helped him in every way, there is no point in life. With no family, there can be no life. This was his creed. He lived by it. He died by it.

Take the child whose home was a towering skyscraper. Imagine what he had to do. Imagine his life. He had to read the works that his father put to him. He had to put to studies that his tutor gave to him. He spent his time with useless physical exercises. All day, he was trained. He was turned into something. He was not an individual. He was turned into something by his superiors. As much as it pains my heart, I must say this: he was not much different than the ghetto child. No, he did not search for dinner in garbage can. No, he did not hold up liquor stores when he was drunk enough. No, he did none of that. For all of his life, he was trained that everything he does must have his father’s consent. His life was very opposite of the ghetto child. No, no, no…. While the ghetto child had no father, the father of the corporate to-be CEO was overimposive. He does not demand that his son does all that he can, that he admire justice, that he gives some time to the moment of tranquility. No, the CEO father demands more than that. He demands that his son agrees to hate, that he looks the other way at injustice, that he has no remand for the goodness of mankind. Trying to console his position with friends, he finds that they all must suffer the same distress, that every parent who can will force his child to be the greatest that they can be. A doctor, an accountant, a lawyer, a banker, all these positions are forced on us, without our consent. All because adults have this ideal that they can mold the world in their own reflection.

So we find both of these children, the ghetto child and the CEO child, homeless, on the streets of the United States of America. It seems that the land of the free is also the land of the poverty and the land of the cruelty. We, as free and independent agents, have recognized our own rights, not by some old document, not by some sacred scrolls, not by some absurd and ridiculous religiion, but by the fact that WE ARE HUMAN, and as such, we deserve the right to be in control of our own lives.

There are empty buildings occupied by no person.

There are people with no place to live.

This is not a liberal or conservative matter. It is matter of justice.

Legalize squatting. And legalize it now.

THIS MATTERS TO US ALL

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