Tag Archives: fans

Booth

Booth: (n) a small temporary tent or structure at a market or a fair

Gullible.Dictionary B

It’s a word we all probably hate. No one wants to be gullible. Yet to be a human being with any sense of blooming hope, you will occasionally find yourself cast into the role of the gullible goose.

I had just recorded an album. I was very proud of it. Our music group had worked a long time to get signed with a small company which took a chance on our musical efforts.

After the initial thrill of the recording and release of the product came a chilling stillness.

It may surprise you, but the world didn’t really care that we cut an album.

So when I was told there was going to be a huge musical festival at a nearby arena, and there were still a few booths available for purchase where I could set up my albums and promote them to the tens of thousands of people filing through, I quickly counted my nickels and pennies procured from my freshly assassinated piggy bank.

I was so excited–especially when one of the promoters told me that the money I invested in the opportunity would be trebled.

The day arrived.

I dressed up according to what I thought I should look like to draw some attention–as did the rest of our group. We sat in our booth waiting to be inundated by potential fans.

But all around us were hundreds of other booths, occupied by folks who were much better known, advertised and certainly provided superior signage.

In the seven hours we sat in that booth, eighteen people stopped by. When I answered for the seventeenth time, “What is this?” I realized I had made a severe mistake.

A booth is a great place to display your wares if it’s something people really want.

And a booth is a terrible place to be if you’re offering something that no one cares about.

 

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Angle

dictionary with letter A

Angle: (n) the space, usually measured in degrees, between two intersecting lines or surfaces.

In the pursuit of our human journey of discovery, revelation and wonder, there are actually very few dead-end roads.

Yet we all sometimes dramatically feel that we have come to such an impasse–where choices have abandoned us and we are left staring into the Great Abyss. But honestly, most of the time–whether you believe it’s life, luck or God–some road intersects into your possibilities just short of falling off the cliff.

That road, joining up with our present march towards extinction, creates an angle.

What a great word.

Yes–there is always an angle allowing us to escape in the nick of time.

There’s even a verse in the Good Book that reinforces this idea. We are provided “a way of escape”–a road that joins our dismal retreat, allowing us to turn right or left, gaining a new perspective and no longer being on a dead-end street.

I have been part of many failing plans. Yet you don’t make money as a writer, nor gain fans, by discussing your dismal results. People normally like to hear about the successes.

But I’ve never had a success which was not a branch from a road heading toward failure, which granted me a new angle–a fresh perspective and a glorious reprieve from doomed conclusions.

It is too much to ask or demand, that we never have a set-back. Matter of fact, in an attempt to avoid such interruptions, we usually invite the possibility of disaster.

But when you’re on one of those dead-end roads that seems to be going nowhere, start looking for the turnoff … the miraculous intervention of opportunity that gives you an angle for escaping the great leap off the edge. 

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Achy

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Achy (adj.): Suffering from dull continuous pain: e.g. she felt tired and achy.

That’s not what it makes me think of!

Because of the foolishness of a crazy song, when I hear the word “achy,” I think of Billy Ray Cyrus singing “Achy Breaky Heart.”

I don’t know what it is about our society, but for some reason or another, to escape the doom and gloom of everyday problems, we will occasionally take on trends which are absolutely too silly for words. Our nation has a whole series of these:

  • The hula hoop: a circular plastic tube you placed around your waist, to wiggle around to keep it constantly rolling.
  • How about The Twist? I saw a movie the other day and people were doing The Twist and I wondered how we were so blind to the stupidity of the vision?
  • Of course, that goes for La Macarena, too.

We have these notions that certain things are cool for a season. They are silly and we want to escape the drudgery of thought, so we jump on the bandwagon and start tooting our horns with the rest of the off-key crowd.

Achy Breaky Heart??? How did that ever get past a publisher?? How did that get recorded?

Somewhere along the line we need monitors in our society who remind us that our particular difficulties are not so seriously devastating that we need to escape to utter childish pursuits.

I see them every day–people chasing this, pursuing that…and I’m telling you, even things like Twitter and Facebook will eventually have the same fate as telegraph lines, designer phones, 8-track tapes and My Space.

Didn’t they have an Achy Breaky Heart dance?? That is the definition of a double hell.

I am not trying to be some sort of curmudgeon who doesn’t see the joy in an occasional flippant trend, but when we’re chasing down causes which we know are stupid even as we’re doing them, it would just be better to avoid the detour.

And you know what’s worse? This guy, Billy Ray, is still traveling around every night–singing that song to adoring fans who remember where they were the first time they heard it. Do you know where I was? In musical hell!

It’s just too much. Even the word “achy” itself is a little bit “Sesame Street.”

Please just be mature enough to go ahead and have an ache.