My thoughts on life, the online community, and bringing them all together in one delicious blog of excitement and happiness... I swear... (Editor's note: This blog was formerly known as Wisdom's Mouthpiece.)
The questions to this plink are as follows: If I could get any tattoo for just a week, what would it be? Where would it be? Would you consider getting it permanently?
It's a good question. And I'm happy with my answer.
It's funny this is brought up, mostly because I thought about a tattoo no less than half an hour ago. Fact is, I'd never get one. Not that I have ANY problem with those who do, I just have no desire to do so. At all.
However, if I HAD to get a tattoo for just a week (or permanently), I'd get a very small replica of Captain America's shield, similar to the one in the included image. Captain America has always been a long-standing hero of mine and the shield symbolizes so much more (both personally and pop culturally) than so many options I could choose to slap on my body.
As to where I'd place it...that's a good question. I'd probably want to go with one of my pectoral muscles. That way, I wouldn't see it all the time or all day, but when I did see it, I'd stop and think about why it's there.
In my head and my heart (and the heads and hearts of many others), Captain America's shield is a sign of strength, courage, bravery, pride, and a true adoration for this country and what those before us have have done to fight for our freedom.
It's powerful. And all of that symbolism can be encapsulated in one small, striped shield with a star in the middle.
A few months ago I came across a song that made me stop and think. It’s not the greatest song ever, and it’s not the deepest song ever, but it has some thought-provoking lines and an upbeat tune, and sometimes that’s all it takes to rock my world.
Watch (or just listen to) this video. After that, I’ve got a question for you.
My question is this: Do you make the most of every day?
In the first verse, Adams states,
“Some make it happen and they make the most, and some get shot down, forced to close…as long as I’ve got this breath to breathe, I’ve gotta get to livin’ my legacy…”
When you get to work on a Friday, is the above thought your mindset? Or is it simply a matter of “only a few more hours until the weekend?” When Monday rolls around, do you walk in the door to “live your legacy,” or are you simply hoping to survive the week?
The song’s title is “Such A Time.” The chorus simply states, “For such a time as this…right here, for such a time…”
This is a time when anybody with a blog or a Twitter account can change the world. So…will you take advantage of such a time as this, or simply spend your life “surviving each week?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m doomed, I wanna give up, wanna go home soon… I lose my faith and jump off the track, don’t wanna wait I’d rather overreact now… Think ‘bout the next man and his joys and prize, and lose my voice and forfeit my pride…render me useless in a world of wax, but deep down I know I’m not all about that, no.”
I'm not really all about that either. How about you?
What do you do to keep your excitement and passion high? Is it the clients you work with, the projects you undertake, or simply the people you interact with on a daily basis? I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback, so leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter.
My latest plink on a prompt that took me about 1.2 seconds to answer and needed no revisions whatsoever. My happiness and joy in its purest form, with no hesitation.
Marvel comic books. Old ones. From the 60s and 70s. A whole stash of them, buried in some kids 7th grade time capsule and clearly long-since forgotten. It's filled with various copies of early Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Avengers comics from a time when comics were pure and characters were being shaped and molded into the eternally-living icons they have now become. Heroes at a time when the world needed heroes, and humans at a time when heroes needed a touch of humanity. The wonder and awe of my childhood wrapped into the yellowing pages of modern mythology.
They may not be metal themselves, but I'm glad that kid left them in a metal container. Good work, little metal detector...
It should be no surprise whatsoever that I love Marvel Comics. I do. Very much. I believe I've made that apparent over the past two or three years, both on this blog and on Twitter.
That said, this story/article/oral history of Marvel Comics is fascinating to me. I first came across it via Ryan Penagos (@Agent_M on Twitter), but it's certainly worth the read if you A) like comic books or B) enjoy reading the history of a company that rose to greatness, fell into bankruptcy and internal strife and disruption and rose from the ashes (like it's own Phoenix character), as told by the creators and editors that lived it themselves.
Tons of great quotes, but two of my favorites are here (from article writer Sean T. Collins)...
"While artists like Kirby and Steve Ditko added personal style and psychedelic flourishes to Lee’s soap-operatic stories, Lee became an in-demand speaker on campuses and a fixture in the comics’ letters column, painting Marvel as one big, happy family fans were welcome to join."
...and this (not necessarily good quote) from Executive Editor Tom Brevoort about Marvel at its peak...
"Everyone had expense accounts. Christmas parties became decadent affairs—the hotel in Grand Central Station, big ice sculptures of Spider-Man, crazy DJs in a control room like Professor X. It was an insane spectacle of excess."
The story does a great job of reflecting both the good and the bad, and it's seriously worth reading.
I used to live in College Station, Texas. I now live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Consequently, I don’t often run into old friends up here in Sioux Falls. So when my friend from College Station said his roommate’s band was playing in Sioux Falls and he was going to travel up with them, my excitement grew.
As a result, I ended up at Nutty’s North on Wednesday night to hang out with my long-lost friend and hear his roommate’s band (Flawless Escape…which was awesome) and a more nationally-renowned band called Flyleaf (which also rocked).
And then I realized something. I’m a hypocrite.
I often find myself complaining that I don’t particularly feel like there’s a “lot of stuff to do” in Sioux Falls. That, after having lived in larger “college towns,” the Sioux Falls landscape isn’t really aimed at engaging the 18-24 year old demographic in which I currently fall. That I wish I were in a city like Minneapolis or another place full of ways to have fun.
Here’s the hypocrisy: I’m not trying to change things. I’m not trying to make a difference. I’m simply complaining about a situation I’m fully capable of changing/adjusting. It’s just easier not to.
How often do we as marketing and social media strategists fall into that trap? How often do we complain that “We could do that campaign so much better!” or ask ourselves “What were they thinking when they made that ad?”
But do we follow that up by going out and changing things? Do we ever step up and say, “Their campaign is awful…let’s show them how we can do it better!”?
Because, until we’ve done that, we’re all just being hypocrites.
I mentioned earlier that I went to a concert Wednesday night. I’ll openly admit that I would have NEVER gone to the show if my buddy wouldn’t have been in town. But, while I may complain about a “lack of ways to have fun,” it’s obvious that this city has plenty of opportunities to provide for a fun night. It’s just a matter of whether I choose to whine about the limitations or choose to take advantage of (or create) those opportunities.
Learn from my mistake. Don’t be a hypocrite. Come up with solutions rather than complaints. That’s when change happens. That’s when we up the ante and transform the industry in a positive way.
And that freakin’ rocks.
How about you? Have you seen opportunities to improve (rather than complain) and then taken advantage of those opportunities? Have you done something fun lately that you had never done before and care to recommend it? Disagree with the post entirely? Let me know by leaving a comment below or hitting me up on Twitter.
-Mike
P.S. - Here's some video footage from Flawless Escape's performance at Nutty's North (straight killing it, fo sho)...
Here's my latest Plink. It's on a topic I don't frequently discuss/judge/critique, but I wanted to answer the question. If you disagree, let me know. I'd love to chat about it. Leave me a comment or hit me up on Twitter at @mikebilleter. Anyway, here's the "movie that disappointed me"...
I'd come to expect a lot from the Indiana Jones series. The originals were some of the first "adult-themed" movies that my parents let me watch as a kid, so I've always had fond memories of borrowing my dad's VHS tapes and watching the movies over and over. The airplane propeller scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is forever ingrained in my memory.
I also loved the Temple of Doom (even though many people don't) because it just ended up being the one I watched the most. Monkey brains, voodoo dolls, fire pits...it was as intense as any 8 year old could handle. I loved that.
Then when I heard they were making a new one, I was skeptical but excited. I'm by no means a film snob, so if there's action and some humor and some fun, it's hard for me not to be happy with it. Coming from a comic book nerd, you take your lumps as far as "bad movies" (Daredevil...which I didn't even hate, but lots of people did) and "good movies" (Iron Man, Incredible Hulk) go. I've come to expect that sense of needing to suspend belief so that, even if the movie is fantastical and unrealistic in the grand scheme of things, it can still be enjoyable.
But...watching guinea pig-sized ants and Caddyshack-esque gophers communicate like characters from a Disney/Pixar film and watching Indiana Jones survive a nuclear blast after being launched through the air at breakneck speeds in a 1950s REFRIGERATOR was just too much for me to handle.
I'm aware that voodoo dolls and arks full of demonic spirits that melt Nazi's faces off are by no means realistic, but at least the old films had the benefit of my childhood awe and mystification to help make them fun.
This one just seemed forced and paled in comparison to my hopeful expectations. I can only suspend disbelief so much (I mean...I actually enjoyed "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"), but this one just pushed me too far in the off-put direction.
So, I'm certainly no film critic, but that's my response to this Plinky prompt. Sorry George Lucas and Steven Spielberg...I'm sure you're both crushed. I would be too.
I read, I listen, I think, and I write. I like things that are funny and I don't like things that are dumb. And I like to write about an issue with intelligence rather than ignorance. Because ignorance is not bliss. It's just stupid.
The questions to this plink are as follows: If I could get any tattoo for just a week, what would it be? Where would it be? Would you consider getting it permanently?
