Archives for July 2006

1. You know how your dog or cat tends to do OK comfort-wise no matter how cold it gets in the winter? The same is not true when it’s 105 degrees in Boston. Make sure you leave all the windows closed when you go to work, and switch off the AC to battle those ridiculous Keyspan bills. When you get home, your pet of choice will be crying and crawling around really drunkenly with its tongue out. It looks like they’re doing a Tara Reid impersonation. Hey everybody – my spaniel is Tara Reid! It never gets old. Coincidentally, neither do any of my pets.

2. Sneak down to the Charles under cover of darkness and fill the wheel wells of one of the Duck Boats with pureed turkey, tuna and raw chicken breasts. By about 10am the smell in those WW2 kilhns should be so bad that even the stray cats and German tourists are gagging.

3. Feed the homeless. They’re out in filthy droves, and you’re a sensitive college student, so spend a night of beer money on sustinence for our more unfortunate citizens for a change. I recommend porridge, french onion soup, raw habanero peppers and salt licks.

4. Take advantage of the local swimming holes. The swan boats only come around every 10 minutes or so, and unlike the Duck Boats they’ve never been equipped with 50 caliber machine guns (to the best of my knowledge). So pop in for a dip when the coast is clear – but wear sandles as the bottom of the pond is very rocky. At least, that’s what I heard from a guy that I know for a fact dumps syringes in there.

Pet supplies, quality assurance products, calling cards, blinds, air purifiers, room nights, sox tickets, snowboards, coffee machines, insulin pumps – I try and help my clients sell it all. So why then don’t I spend more time using these skills chipping away at the bane of my existence – renting rooms and apartments in the North End?

It’s simple, really. As I’ve said before – If I could go back and start this blog again I would have made sure of 2 things: 1) I would have built it using Wordpress. 2) I would have kept it anonymous. But since my neck is already exposed let’s talk about what I have coming up in September – even if it is only in the interests of generating an incoming link (crucial to SEO my friends,) to my building-specific site. If you’re looking for a boston north end apartment, prick up your ears, prick.

– 1 Bedroom, 2 floor apartment with a great kitchen and lots of room. $1400+ a month. Ideal for a couple, or just a really fat bloke.

– 3 Bedroom apartment right next to roofdeck I’ll throw you off of if you make too much noise after 10pm. $2400+ a month. Form a line to the left.

– And the grand prize – 1 bedroom in my 3 bedroom apartment. $780 +. Dear old Nate has been transfered to NYC, and Tommy and I need a new third. We also need a new roomate (rimshot). All the apartments have access to the roofdeck and there’s a washer/dryer in the building.

For all the moaning I do about my building, there’s a reason I’ve lived there for almost 7 years. I’m single, broke, obsessive-compulsive, have a cat, smell funny, have made a disgusting nest out of an old mattress/saliva and have buried a staggering amount of prostitutes in the earthen cellar. But besides that, I love it. AND we’re about to get a brand new roofdeck installed in the coming weeks. Just putting it out there. You never know. Email me if you’re homeless, soon-to-be homeless and do not smell like pee.

There are 6 elevators in my building, serving only 14 floors. In short, you never have to wait long for one to pop open and magically whisk you to wherever you want to go. I’m sure there are wheels and pulleys involved or something, but it does feel wonderfully enchanted. I also have to point out that there are a lot of consulates in my building – Netherlands, Peru, Brazil and the list goes on. Most of these, thank goodness, are also on my floor. So I get to spend a large amount of time each day shooing lost souls out of my office as they wander in looking for notaries, photos or my favorite – the mythical ATM that is supposedly on my floor somewhere, possibly right next to a Yeti.

“Where ATM?!” is a frequent greeting within the front door of the office we pay over 3 grand a month to occupy. “Well hello there, little fella. Wow, they certainly don’t grow them big in the Yucatan, do they?” I offer him a chair, a donut and point to the coffee machine. No I don’t. “ATM. Where?” I usually shrug menacingly and point towards the broom closet on the other side of the hall. I think they keep Nessie in there.

Where am I going with this… Ah yes. Flocks of foreign folks come to my building daily looking for passports and the like. Fleets. Scores. It’s Ellis Island with fax machines. And should any of them ever Google Park Plaza and have a chance to read this post before arriving, I’d like to share with them 5 simple elevator rules.

1.) There are 6 of the fucking things. Don’t try and hold them open for your cousin who hasn’t even signed in with security yet like you’re fighting for helicopter space while being airlifted out of Hanoi.

2.) If you run towards the elevator when it is closing, and I make a concerned face and motion towards the side like I’m trying to hit the button that holds the door – I’m not. I’m pretending, and I’ve got to tell you it’s definitely always a high point of my day.

3.) If you’re trying to go back to the lobby, don’t get on an elevator that is going up. You just look like a silly goose and there’s nothing on the higher floors except more people trying to work who don’t want to talk to you and also have no clue where the Tibetan, braille ATM is.

4.) There are embassies and consulates in the building. Don’t look at the security guards like they’re stupid and ignore them, or pass right through the checkpoint so they have to come out from behind the desk like LT and tackle you. Actually, disregard that and keep doing it. It’s priceless.

5.) I don’t speak Spanish. I’m a nice guy and am actually inclined to help you find what you’re looking for. But learn the language. At least, don’t assume that my blatantly pale, caucasoid behind knows what the hell you’re talking about. You could be asking for a bite of my sausage croissant, for all I know. And that’s just unhygenic.

And the children you all keep bringing to allow to roam free in the halls and ring my bell or jiggle my doorknob until I’m forced to get up, walk over and give them the stinkeye – Are you trying to make me feel like my father? I’m just trying to get a little work done. Welcome to our country, now fuck off out of my office.

This is one of the most insane things I have ever read in a Boston newspaper.

“On the fourth anniversary of her brother’s slaying, a woman lighting candles at a makeshift shrine to him was gunned down, killed at about the same spot, on the same day and at nearly the same hour as her older sibling.”

When I read this headline on CNN, I assumed it had unfolded in Iraq or Israel. Nope – try Roxbury. If you read the full article, you’ll see that the poor woman wasn’t even planning to go to the shrine, but went back when she noticed the candles had blown out. Was someone following her, waiting for her or was this a stray bullet and subsequently the most bizarre coincidence in the history of mankind?

Wow – two boring, business-related posts in a row? You know the deal, people. I work in SEO and this site is a great way to get my new projects spidered – so please bear with me. You might even learn something.

The distribution of online press releases has become a major facet of search engine marketing. The practice can be as easy as it is effective, and my new site will strive to answer all of the most popular questions. I know a heck of a lot about this stuff, and decided it was time to put my thoughts and know-how down in one place. Click through, have a read and then suggest press releases at your next marketing meeting for an instantaneous hand-job from your CEO. Hopefully they will give you a raise… and are also of the opposite sex.

Blog this, and blog that. You’re sick of hearing the word. You’ve met 7-year-old kids who have told you your company needs a blog. And now you’re not allowed to be within 30 feet of 7-year-old kids anymore. What the heck are blogs, exactly – and why do they make a difference to your marketing mix? Why am I bothering to tell you? Show me on the doll where the bad man blogged you.

At its simplest definition, a blog is little more than an easily updateable, content management system (CMS). At it’s most effective, it gives individuals and groups the ability to become authorities in their chosen field. Coupled with a service or retail based website, an objective and original blog of quality can drive scores of relevant visitors who may then convert to customers, employees or new friends.

But how do blogs relate directly to SEO and SEM in general? The original content your company creates is ideally updated every few days. Indexing spiders are more likely to visit, and look favorably upon, websites that have changed somewhat each and every time the drop in for a visit. This will increase spidering frequency, and also improve your legitimacy in the eyes of the major algorithms. Not to mention all of the unsolicited incoming links that objective resources effortlessly attract.

Make it good and make it frequent. Add good, niche subject matter and the rest just may take care of itself. I’ll spare you the Field of Dreams analogy.

I’m really looking forward to digging a hole and crawling into it just as soon as I possibly can. Things have gotten overwhelming fast, and I am looking for ways to quickly cull the herd of stress monkeys stampeding through my weakening psyche. Yoga, aromatherapy and hard drugs aren’t going to cut it. I have to learn how to say “no”. Learn how to say “I am too busy”. Learn how to change my phone number and mailing address before I’m found pushing a shopping cart full of dead squirrels through the Public Garden.

What I should do is stop managing my building. But I’m going to press on, as the worst is almost over. I’m not worried about jinxing myself because short of Godzilla, locusts, nuclear termites or Tom Hanks and Shelly Long moving in – the worst is definitely almost over. It has to be, or I’ve obviously got to start considering the possibility that I may have somehow angered a Mayan God at some point. What I am going to do, is wrap up all the side-projects I have on the go that aren’t making me any money. This blog being one of several exceptions.

Family – I don’t talk about much here. The job – same rules apply, however I will say that both are a bit fucked at the moment. Life happens, and I’m not cruising for sympathy by any means. There are 8 million stories in the windy city, afterall. I’m simply getting the monkeys down in writing to help me figure out a way to combat their growing numbers. Membership is way up this year. I don’t make enough money, have enough ex-wives or have lived the sort of evil life that should warrant me considering becoming a sherpa at 32.

The most important thing I have decided to do, and I’ll likely live to regret publicizing this, is to cut down on the vices and stock way up on the healthy. Vices may constitute beer or frozen DiGiorno’s pizzas. Healthy might consist of a new gym membership or a garden salad. I haven’t figured out the details yet, but have been running some personal experiments that have proven promising in terms of productivity and clarity. This isn’t a mid-year resolution. This is a sea change. I’m calling my shot, and you can just watch me. Besides – Tiernan’s is history. That’s bound to add 5 years to my life right there.

Sort it out, Pye. Sort it out. Sherping awaits.