{"id":156,"date":"2008-07-14T16:15:09","date_gmt":"2008-07-14T21:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=156"},"modified":"2018-10-31T12:38:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T16:38:24","slug":"wait-people-are-paying-attention-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=156","title":{"rendered":"Wait! People are paying attention to me?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently badmouthed Galleycat<\/a>, because enough with the lolcats thing, okay?\u00a0 And that goes for everybody.<\/p>\n

I just hate the internet.\u00a0 I want to go back to making Xerox chapbooks and selling them at the groovy record store.\u00a0 I want a world without Google Chat.\u00a0 I want personal correspondence to be measured in days, not minutes.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, Galleycat responded<\/a>.\u00a0 Scary!
\n<\/p>\n

I live under the assumption that nobody reads this page, so I can say whatever I feel like and it\u2019s like John Boy Walton\u2019s journal, which burned up in the big house fire later in the series.\u00a0 (That always sort of confused the whole faux-authenticity of The Waltons<\/em> in my young mind.)<\/p>\n

I know a few friends read the page, but friends aren\u2019t real people!\u00a0 Until they break up with their spouses and spend two weeks on my couch.\u00a0 Then they\u2019re a little too fucking real.\u00a0 But as far as strangers, well, how could they possibly read the blog?<\/p>\n

In order to answer a question constantly put to me by the guy who runs Flaming Spinach<\/a>, I set up that Feedburner thing.\u00a0 The RSS is on the side of the page and you can click or something or whatever.\u00a0 Supposedly, that tells me how many subscribers and hits I get.\u00a0 The count is always zero, which means that I\u2019m right about my readership and I can go ahead and badmouth esteemed blogs like Galleycat.<\/p>\n

The comment comes from Galleycat\u2019s co-editor Andy Heidel, and I found myself caught off guard, after a giddy moment where I stuffed the books I\u2019m publishing into an envelope and wrote \u201cTO ANDY IN NYC\u201d in crayon on the front.<\/p>\n

I thought\u2026oh, better not.\u00a0 Because he\u2019ll ruthlessly attack me for making fun of Galleycat.\u00a0 Plus, I try not to publicly cross Greatsociety with my publishing venture because I believe it\u2019s bad for business.\u00a0 I can see it now:<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u00a0 He\u2019s a publisher!\u00a0 Cool.\u00a0 What\u2019s this?\u00a0 He runs Greatsociety.org also?\u00a0 Let\u2019s see\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

*click click*<\/p>\n

July 14th:\u00a0 Today I was chased down First Street by the disembodied penis of Richard Nixon and I kept tripping on my Gingham dress.<\/p>\n

Though, I don\u2019t know\u2026\u00a0 If I just open up and use my real name and still act crazy, it might be marketing genius.\u00a0 It\u2019s an open secret<\/a>, anyway.<\/p>\n

Andy Heidel knows about marketing stuff like that, so I\u2019ll let him advise.\u00a0 Because, see, while I unsubscribed to Galleycat, clicking on Andy’s name led me to Heidelblerg<\/a>, his personal blog, which I subscribed to right away to fill that new gap in the mystical world of Google Reader.\u00a0 And there are no goddamn lolcats there!<\/p>\n

And that led me to the other blog where he works:\u00a0 The Not For Tourists spot for New York<\/a> and, yes, they have one for DC<\/a>.\u00a0 (Amusingly, my weekend job was recently featured on that site, as well as the old family business.\u00a0 So I did not subscribe because I\u2019m haunted by demons.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no real debate about sending the books to Heidel because, in the end, I\u2019m a whore. So I\u2019ll drunkenly email him some night this week.\u00a0 One thing\u2019s for sure \u2013 I wish I knew about his services<\/a> before now.\u00a0 After burning through two slack-jawed, waterhead, spineless publicists, I\u2019m just this side of organizing flying wedges like the Irish did in the 1920\u2019s.\u00a0 Go to the countryside and burn the homes of publicists!\u00a0 Blow up their golf carts!\u00a0 Poison their skim milk lattes!<\/p>\n

I could have used a groovier sort of publicist.\u00a0 But, oh well, there’s vodka chilling in the freezer and that’s what it’s all about in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently badmouthed Galleycat, because enough with the lolcats thing, okay?\u00a0 And that goes for everybody. I just hate the internet.\u00a0 I want to go back to making Xerox chapbooks and selling them at the groovy record store.\u00a0 I want …<\/p>\n

Wait! People are paying attention to me?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[402,220,176],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-books","tag-galley-cat","tag-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}