"Why I now accept donations" or "Well, duh!"

(760 words)

I didn’t tell anyone I’d written a single blog until I’d already written and posted 50 of the suckers. That was way back in ’08.

I wanted to have something browse-worthy so if someone liked one, they could go back and read a bunch. I wasn’t interested in readers.

I wanted addicts.

Blogging’s taught me I’m a real writer.

This is more surprising than it seems.

See, I’d always written, but that’s not the same as being a writer.

Because prior to blogging, writing had always involved financial incentive. Blogging, especially at the crest of the Great Recession, was something completely different.

It’s like standing on a busy sidewalk and talking to yourself and hoping someone will stop by to at least listen a little.

That’s what happened. Right off the bat, my blog earned a really devoted and diverse readership. There were housewives, teachers, attorneys, mill workers, entrepreneurs, farmers, waitresses, and one retired captain of a U.S. Navy missile destroyer.

And they came from around the world. I stopped keeping track a few years ago after four people from Trinidad and Tobago stopped by for a long loaf. In my geographic ignorance, I assumed they visiting readers from countries number 200 and 201.

That’s the day I learned that Trinidad and Tobago aren’t two countries, but one. The insight provided me not just with a boost of blog self-esteem, but a handy topic for the next day.

I remember thinking, man, if I could get 50,000 people to read this thing, that’d really be something.

It’s likely by St. Patrick’s Day I’ll have 250,000 in just about the last two years.

And during all this blogging, the one question that keeps coming up is this: “How do you make any money blogging?”

Well, I don’t.

It’d be different if my blog were called “Eight Days To A Really Great Bike Vacation!” I could advertise and offer paid endorsements.

But my blog’s not about selling products. It’s about making people feel better.

Everyone knows there’s no money in that. 

Heck, it’s what Mother Teresa was all about and, geez, did you ever see the way she dressed?

But what’s become increasingly apparent over the last year is that people are frustrated my blog does not make me money. 

This became too momentous to ignore the week before Christmas when two avid readers — one of whom I’d never even met — called with the purpose of staging an intervention.

Regular readers might conclude they were going to lecture me on drinking too much. In fact, they weren’t at all concerned I drink too much.

What worries them is I earn too little.

“You need to understand how much your blog means to people,” said one. “People love your blog and many will gladly pay to support you. You need to right away begin including something that will allow people to donate.”

It went on like that.

And, you know what, it’s nothing I hadn’t heard before.

It’s very gratifying.

So now, yes, I’m accepting donations. I solicit them. If you enjoy the blog and can afford to, I welcome your support.

The blog will always be free.

But if you’ve been a regular reader for these past six years and can afford to express some gratitude, just click the “Donate” button and it’ll link to my PayPal account.

How much? That’s where it gets tricky.

Here’s a handy guide: a $60 donation would be $5 a month or about 25-cents per post.

I’m weighing an incentive where for every $500 donation I’ll come by your house to either read the blog aloud to you and your friends or clean your gutters, whichever seems more appealing.

Either way, the blog’s not going to change. I enjoy writing it too much to make any drastic changes based on income.

All donations, I promise, will be anonymous.

All but this one.

I want to publicly thank my very first donor, a Mrs. Valerie R., from Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She donated $2 first thing this morning.

You, Valerie R., are the best!

In the interest of maintaining blog integrity, I guess I’d better come clean.

Valerie R. is my wife. I snuck onto her computer while she was getting the kids ready for school. I wanted to see if the procedure was glitch-free.

It is and, yes, I put $2 on her computer to compensate for my sneak.

I thought about having her donate $60, but that would have been risky.

She’d have viewed it as a case of robbing Peter to PayPal.

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On the 7th day he blogged . . .

Why soccer/metrics won't ever measure up in USA

(1,085 words)

When I heard this morning that USA had beaten Ghana I didn’t realize it was our national soccer team beating their national soccer team.

I thought it was Seal Team 6 and they’d conquered all of Ghana.

It’s once again time for that quadrennial event that I’ve for the last 40 years been hearing was going to make a soccer lunatic out of me.

It’s once again time for the World Cup.

I feel about soccer the same way I’ve always felt about the metric system.

People have always told me I’d grow to love it, that it was the wave of the future and that soon America would join the rest of the world in embracing it.

“I knew the metric system in America was doomed about 20 years ago when I saw a sign on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that read, ‘Metric System Measurements In Place — Next 10 Miles.’”

That’s what my friend Dave once said when I asked him if he ever thought we’d live to see metric go mainstream.

He was right. Today, the only metric measurement instantly familiar to every American has nothing to do with distance, but everything to do with soda.

It is the two-liter bottle of Coke.

And why that one caught on where all the rest have failed might have more to do with carbonation than convenience.

Has your spouse ever asked you to bring home a two-liter jug of milk? Of course not. That’s because there is no such thing. Milk is mostly sold by the gallon or the half-gallon.

But no one’s ever sold Coke by the gallon. I think that’s because the public and the soda titans labor under the quaint notion a gallon of soda might go flat if left in the fridge too long, something that won’t happen with pasteurized milk.

I believe, given our unquenchable thirsts for these carbonated poisons, these measurements might soon change. Americans of all ages love to guzzle pop.

You could soak your feet in a typical Big Gulp from down at the local convenience mart. The two-liter size could be soon obsolete.

Mark my words: in 20 years soda will in some nutrition-free pockets of America replace milk as the cereal supplement.

Burp!

This is important because unlike soccer, Americans instinctively care about soda.

It’s now safe to judge the great American soccer experiment a failure. We’ve now had four generations of Americans weaned on soccer. Every boy and every girl from ages 4 to 50 has spent at least a few recreational hours kicking a soccer ball.

And World Cup indifference is as rampant as it’s ever been.

Me and the boys at the bar spent a few minutes trying to figure out why that’s so and what could be done to make soccer more interesting to Americans.

Most of the answers involved adding violence.

“They should be allowed to check,” Bill said. “I’d watch that.”

In fact, he wouldn’t. We have a form of that that’s a niche sport ignored by the sports viewing public.

It’s called rugby.

Another guy said he’d watch more if they’d show a split screen of the riots outside the stadium or the inside brawls between rival nations.

This is a promising idea. Soccer’s hampered by near non-existent scoring. The games would be more interesting if fans of, say, Cameroon, could add points for the national team by beating the crap out of fans from maybe Uruguay. 

Soccer viewership suffers from a field that’s too big. The so-called “action” takes place over a prairie-sized field and the cameras need to be so far back it’s like you’re watching a tavern foosball game from the line to get into the men’s room. It’s microscopic.

This could be improved by either shrinking the field or blowing pieces of it to smithereens.

I said the game would be more fun to watch if each team were before the game allowed to plant six or seven land mines where they believe they could cause their opponent the most mayhem. 

As the tournament ground on the bloody fields would become progressively more damaged and the games simultaneously more entertaining. The more challenging and apocalyptic the surface, the more interesting the event becomes. It’s that way with professional golf and a typical Sunday drive along Pennsylvania’s highways.

Of course, these ideas will be ridiculed by the purists so I have a goodwill suggestion that will improve American relations around the world.

Instead of fielding our top soccer athletes — men who washed out of football, basketball, baseball, tennis, swimming, fencing and all the other sports young men play in the hopes it’ll get them laid — we should dress our fat cat CEOs who sponsor the team.

This would appeal to their massive egos and the ratings would surge because we’d all tune in to see them get creamed on the pitch or maybe have an entertaining heart attack as time wound down.

And, best of all, they’d be guaranteed to lose and that should be our paramount ambition regarding U.S. soccer.

Think about it. Today, devoted American soccer fans — and that’s about 28 folks — are rejoicing. Why? Because we beat Ghana.

Ghana! 

I sense you’re not feeling the same euphoria you felt over the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” takedown over the Evil Empire.

Do you know anything about Ghana?

Me neither so I looked it up. It’s a wonderful little nation. We should ask if it’d like to be America’s little brother — like Canada only littler.

Ghana is the world’s largest producer of cocoa. How delightful. I read that and imagined the leading ethnicity among its 24.2 million people is Oompa Loompa. 

It’s considered the 7th best-governed country in all of Africa.

Suck on that, Djbouti!

It’s such a productive and stable democracy we really should consider them next time the neo-cons demand we find another pushover to invade.

And today these humble Ghanas are all devastated, bereft, morose. All because they lost a soccer match neither you or I give a crap about.

Imagine how happy Ghanans would be today if they’d beaten us. They’d be overjoyed. They’d feel immense national pride. The streets would be running with domestic hot chocolate.

Think of the international goodwill we’d score if we let a team like Ghana beat us. 

So if America cares at all about soccer, losing should be our goal, our only goal.

And this being soccer, one goal is usually all it takes.

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