May 2009

Remember a week or so ago when I told you about my new bloggy crush, Havi Brooks? You all helped me take her teleclass webinar thingy on non-strategic marketing strategy, and it was really cool. Thanks!

Today, I’ve decided to shamelessly steal-borrow-adapt one of Havi’s other ideas - a weekly post that she calls her Friday Chicken/Checkin. It’s essentially a place and time where she rambles waxes eloquently about her week - the good, the bad, the painful, the beautiful. But because I’m me, and I have to be different even from the different, I’ve opted for a condiment cliche instead of a poultry pun. There’s a reason for my changing it up, too… it’s a reminder to me to catch-up on all of the things I should have told you about this week, and didn’t.

So here goes, your very first edition of Friday Ketchup!

First up? Some linkage for you:

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The other day, in a post about Penn & Teller, I wrote this:

When I was in my wacky lets-learn-all-about-spiritual-secrets-and shamanism phase, I became fascinated by the way shamans could use tricks of illusion and magic as part of ritual and surprisingly effective medical treatments. Indigenous spiritual practices are full of manufactured illusions that are treated as reality, even by the practitioners themselves - but that’s another post.

This Is That Post (and yes, it’s stoopid-long)

Ahem.

For a few years during my spiritual insanity, I had an actual-real-live-official mentor amid all the wackiness.

And yes, he was more than a wee-bit-wacky himself, but he was also quite smart, knowledgable and insightful, and a good sort of mentor (at least so long as you remembered he was basically a bit wacky. I did forget, every once in a while)

But anyway.

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When I was little, my grandfather would amaze me with a rudimentary magic trick - presto, change-o, and with a pass behind his back, a green poker chip would turn into a red one.

Hey, I was only 3 years old, my powers of observation were limited. But I’ve always loved stage magic, and the mental jolt of “HEY! That’s not right, how’d that happen?” [click to continue...]

OOPS. You missed the deadline for the extra special price offer, but I *did* get to attend Havi’s call (and it was way cool. more later) Still, I’m leaving this post here because, well… I love the image of the duck with antlers too much to take it down.

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Here’s the thing. I have a new bloggy web crush. Her name is Havi Brooks. No, she doesn’t know I exist, and yes, that is a rubber duck on her shoulder.

More on the duck, later.

I have a crush on her because Havi does things on the web the way I used to do them before I started learning how I’m supposed to do things on the web, got all self conscious and mucked it all up. See, her marketing approach is to be shamelessly, unrelentingly, and blatantly herself, wearing her issues and quirks on her sleeve.

She also has a wicked sense of intuition, humor, and creativity. Sound familiar? [click to continue...]

Well, I do!

Sometimes I speak in a self conscious, half silenced and stammering voice. Other times, I speak with confidence, humor and certainty. Occasionally, I speak in images, lines and colors, messages formed with paintbrushes rather than vocal cords. And when I speak to God, it may be in syllables of untrained dance rhythms and motion. [click to continue...]