I can’t read anything lately. Fiction sucks, blog posts* suck, self-help sucks, self-help blog posts suck most of all. Poetry is still okay, and maybe essays, haven’t read any of the latter lately. Soon, maybe, I’ll look for an essay on “How to get a Christmas tree out of your house without getting needles on everything or the kittens escaping.”

I have been stumbling across the occasional self-help blog post, and it is this scourge I’d like to address here. I missed the Web 2.0 make money with your blog memo, but there seem to be tons of people who didn’t, and there are all these new blogs out about how to do things.

This is caused, I guess, by the “find your niche” thing. Be an expert on something, and they will come.

Do those guys who do this really make money?

This, too, will pass, I guess. The nabobs will be all nattered out eventually. Because, eventually, it all boils down to getting into your car, and chasing Buddha down the road.

It’s not called self-help for nothing.

I read this article on How to be Independent yesterday. I read it by accident, I wasn’t googling “please tell me how to be independent” or anything.

It boiled down to popping a cap in Buddha’s ass. Pack your own lunch, stuff like that.

That’s my New Year’s resolution right there. Be less of a jerk. Pack my own lunch. This Car Does Not Break For Buddhas bumper sticker.

You should see the bumper stickers on Beta’s car. I drove it to work once when my car was in the shop and my co-workers now think I’m a maniac.

Here is my advice to all of you new bloggers who want to write killer blog posts: learn to play backgammon, and do that instead. Fuck. No one cares what you have to say. Some of us have been doing this for ten years now, or more, and we are much better at it, and no one cares what we have to say either.

Do some push-ups and sit-ups instead, and cut down on the refined carbohydrates.

Learn to play a musical instrument.

Fuck, I don’t know.

Why do you want to write a killer blog post, anyway? Who cares about blog posts? Blog posts are stupid.

Also: write something every day, to something-something with all those people who subscribe to your DNA feed or whatever it’s called.

Be independent, basically.

By “independent,” I mean “you”.

There are days you will be cranky and of the view that blogging is stupid: write a post about that! Maybe it will make you famous or something, and Amanda Palmer will play you a Radiohead song on her ukulele in her underwear.

Remember that less is more. Write, then cut everything out again. After ten years at this, it is easier. So keep it up, too.

Also, get a muse. I have several. Gamma was giving me good advice the other night. I was telling her a bedtime story about the Mayan prediction that the world will come to an end in 2012, and she said, “see, that’s the difference between the stories you write down and the stories you tell me,” (she finds the latter superior to the former). (In the story I was telling her, a little girl had heard a strange noise and was searching her darkened house.) “You would just write, ‘she looked everywhere,’ but when you tell me the story, you say, ‘she looked in that room, and then she looked in the other room, and then she went around the corner and looked in the next room, behind the cabinets…’ and so on. And I like that better.” So, remember to include lots of details and don’t cut out too much.

Also, give away free e-books for some reason.

And have contests!**

*except yours

** that reminds me, Valentine’s Day looms, doesn’t it.