Today’s blogging 101 assignment is read six posts that use the writing prompt I picked last night and comment on at least two of them.

I did it…

But we’re into the third week of this thing now and we’re still getting asked to do things that don’t involve actually writing anything on our own page? Is this blogging 101 or is it being active in wordpress.com 101? ‘Cause I think this has more to do with generating wordpress.com traffic than anything else. I’m kinda pissed off about it. Like, what a waste of time this thing has been.

The Daily Post gives writing prompts. Bunches of them. You can keep refreshing the widget to get more and more new prompts. Today’s Blogging 101 prompt is to go to the Daily Post and grab a writing prompt. Umm… okay.

Verbal Ticks…

I know I have a few verbal ticks, but that’s not where I’m going with this. I have spent most of my adult life being one of those dicks who quotes movies and TV shows left and right. Spaceballs and Star Wars are big ones, but if there can be only one then it’s The Highlander (see what I did there?). Mystery Science Theater 3000 is pretty much the perfect show for my tastes.

Today I’d like to discuss a show that seems to be catering itself to people like me. The Walking Dead.

While the show is very far from a catch phrase creation machine, there is one character, Abraham, who recently has started becoming a source for new and exciting ways to use the word “dick”. A couple of weeks ago gave us something like, that plan just got dicked. Last night gave us one of the greatest exclamations in television history when, as the zombies were closing in, Abraham gave an exasperated, “Mother Dick”. I was sitting up in bed watching on my iPad (thanks Verizon FiOS app!) and my beloved, beautiful, brilliant (the three B’s) wife was asleep next to me. When the Mother Dick was exclaimed I had to put my hand over my mouth to stifle my guffaw so as to not wake her.

Adding to what I will now refer to as The Abrahamisms, or the Abraham Dickisms. (I like that one better) was the phrase born on The Talking Dead a couple of weeks ago. I missed the actual moment of creation, but Kevin Smith was a guest that week and I hope with all my heart that he was the one who first uttered it. Porch Dick. Meaning someone who acts like a dick while sitting safely on his own front porch. Absolutely brilliant!

So kudos to The Walking Dead for giving me all sorts of new TV quotes with which to annoy you good people, and for creatively coming up with new and improved ways to use the word Dick. Your assignment for the coming week is to therefore try to use the phrase “mother dick” in polite conversation.

Enjoy.

Okay… One more day…

I’m intrigued by the whole Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke lawsuit. It’s obvious to anyone who has functioning ears that the Robin Thicke song is blatantly stolen from the Marvin Gaye song. It’s painfully clear. The right group won the case. It’s just that simple.

What’s bugging me is the crap that’s gone on around the case. First off, many people are commenting on stories saying that they disagree with the decision. I write those people off as not having functioning ears. I’m sorry. There are copyright rules regarding sampling, and you are allowed to use portions of an existing work within your new work. Courtesy dictates that you credit the source material. That’s not what happened here. They took the heart and soul of the song and just stole it. It’s blatant.

Why then did the Robin Thicke team sue the Marvin Gaye team? You read that right. Someone representing Gaye’s estate made a comment that the songs were very similar so Robin Thicke actually sued the Gaye estate. Really? Is that really how it happened? The case that was decided this week was the Gaye estate’s counter suit. I mean… guys… you blatantly stole the song and then had the audacity to sue the owner of the original song when they dared question your motives? You deserved to lose the whole thing just as a punishment for your stupidity. Chances are if you had kept your mouths shut NOTHING WOULD EVER HAVE COME OUT OF IT! Your little pop song would have dropped off the charts and gone away forever the way all little pop songs do. It was stupid to respond and now you’re paying the price financially.

As for the Gaye estate… what is this injunction crap? That is totally the wrong move. First of all, as just mentioned, it’s a pop song that’s already fallen off the charts. How many copies of it do you expect them to sell from now on? I’ll tell you how many. Not many! Second, stopping the sales doesn’t do anything except bring more attention. What you should have done is asked the court to put Marvin Gaye’s name into both the writing and publishing credits. That way what few copies do sell from now on would result in income. That, on top of the huge cash settlement, would have put Mr Gaye’s family into a very nice financial position for the foreseeable future. Instead you now look like sore winners who aren’t happy with 7+ million dollars. Bad move, folks. Bad move.

Of course all of this mess could have been avoided if the folks who took credit for writing the Thicke song had just been courteous and professional and included Marvin Gaye’s name in the credit from day one. Credibility wise there is nothing wrong with borrowing from your influences, so long as you give credit where credit is due. If it really was just “the groove” that you took, then fine. It wasn’t. You took everything from the original song’s backing track. You should have given Marvin Gaye a writing credit from the start. That would have been the right thing to do, and you would have looked AWESOME doing it. Everyone in the business would have taken notice of it and I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say you would have come off as heroes to the R&B  community. That move would have been a great one.

I should note that I keep saying they should have given Marvin Gaye a writing and publishing credit. I realize that I don’t know for sure that Marvin Gaye wrote the song. I believe he did, but if so I don’t know if there were other people collaborating. I should say that the writers of the original song should be given credit on the song that stole from them.

So there. Blogging 101 asked us to write a post based on something we commented on yesterday. Normally I would say that the things I comment on really aren’t anyone’s business besides me and the person who wrote the post that I commented on. In this case though, I was probably going to write something about this anyway. So there you go.

*edits* I knew that he spelled his last name Gaye, with an e, but at about the same time “Sexual Healing” was climbing the charts I had a classmate who spelled his last name without the e, Gay.  For some reason in this post I went with Pete’s spelling instead of Marvin’s.  Fixed.

Today’s challenge is to leave comments on at least four posts. Done. You know, I thought this was going to be writing prompts. It seems that very little of the blogging 101 assignments have involved actual blogging. I am losing interest at a remarkable rate.

I just reread last night’s email I was supposed to bookmark the posts I commented on. I’ll need them for a future day’s challenge.

Um… no. I am already following every blog I commented on (hence my pulling them from the Reader), I’m not bookmarking them too.

I think I might be done with blogging 101.

SOL on this one.  The challenge for today is as follows:

Today’s assignment: create and upload a simple header, background, or both. Already done? Try a widget.

I would if I could, but I can’t.  My new theme does not support headers.  My last theme did, and I would update it now and then.  Not today though.  No header for me.

I could add a background, but I don’t want to.  I don’t like backgrounds.  I feel that they get in the way.  Especially when added by someone like me who is not a graphic designer and who just pulls in a picture that he likes.  So no header and no background for me.

Widgets, however.  I usually keep a bunch of them on the side bar.  Unfortunately, when I changed themes the other day all of the widgets I had were inactivated.  So, in the spirit of blogging 101, I went in and reactivated them.  Do you see the menu on the left?  Somewhere around there (depending on the dimensions of your screen) there will be a little folder icon.  Click that puppy and enjoy widget bliss.

The first challenge of week two is to write an About page. I had an about page already, but I did what the challenge asked of me.

Here it is.

The email with tomorrow’s challenge just came in. They come out at midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Which last week was 8:00pm Eastern time. Now it’s 9:00 Eastern time. Let’s go see what they want me to do tomorrow. Why do I fear it is not an actual blog post?

I knew it.  The day after I change my theme blogging 101 tells em to try three new themes.  Well, I tried at least three yesterday and actually kept one of them.  I’ll call this day’s challenge completed.

Today’s blogging 101 prompt isn’t a prompt.  In fact it doesn’t even require a post to your blog.  Weird, huh?

Today we are being asked to follow five topics in the wordpress.com Reader (think of it as an RSS feed specific to wordpress.com) and to follow five blogs.  Sounds easy enough.

You follow a topic by entering a tag into the Reader page.  It then spits out posts with that tag.  Seeing as I am tagging this post with Blogging101, and the photo posts with photo101, I will start with those two.  Done and done.

I was a little disappointed to see the results of photo101.  Most of the first batch of posts that were returned used photographs that were not taken on the day of the post.  Granted, no where in the rules does it say you have to take today’s post’s picture today, but I’ve been doing that so far, and I hope to do it for the whole month.  (having said that, I make no promise that any given day’s post will be made on the actual day the prompt is given.  I absolutely reserve the right to push things off until I can get somewhere to take an appropriate picture.  I’ll try to keep things in order though)

So what other tags can I follow in Reader?  I actually already have about a metric ton of topics followed, but I can add a few more.  RPM Challenge and FAWM are already there.  I wonder if rpm2015 is too.  That’s the official 2015 RPM Challenge twitter hash tag.  Turns out the only posts are mine.  What about audio hosting sites.  Will there be anything for soundcloud or hearthis.at?  Again, I am the only person to tag a post with hearthis.at, but soundcloud has a bunch of hits.  That’s three, even though I hate soundcloud.  Oh, what about GarageBand and Logic Pro?  Done and Done.

As for the five blogs I will follow.  Well, none of your business.  When looking at GarageBand posts I did stumble on an RPM participant.  That’s one.  While looking at Logic Pro I found someone who used the light bright looking Moonenite that caused such a terrorism scare in Boston a few years ago as a profile picture.  That’s two.  The final three will all be people who posted photo101 pictures today. Then I’ll add a sixth blog for luck.  Someone who has entered a post about Boston.

Done and done.

Assignment number two in blogging 101 is to edit my page’s title and tagline.

Ummm… No.

I like the page’s title and I like the tagline too. Sure, I made them both up without giving them any thought on the day I opened the account, but they’re mine. Know what I mean?

I had two Blogger pages. One public, one private. They were called “The Importance of Being Rob” and “The Inside Scoop on Rob”. Both seriously stupid, but probably less stupid than Inside the Red Head’s Head. The tagline, “Things that go on in Rob’s weird brain” is probably the single most accurate thing I’ve ever written on this page.

Rob is weird after all. Therefore ol’ Robbie won’t be changing his title or tagline any time soon.