Have you heard about that Vlog Every Day in April challenge thing going around?  Honestly, I think it's a bunch of horseshit.  If, however, you're participating in it, to you I say: kudos on your ability to, um, follow silly trends!!!

I'm writing this because I just left a comment on my friend Emily's blog.  She had challenged herself to blog every day in April (a cunning variation on the former) and concluded that she had epicly failed at this task.

First: I'm an ass without much sense of tact.  I should offer my apologies to Emily before I actually say anything, pointing out that above all, I simply want to encourage her creative efforts.

Second: trending challenges are horseshit.  I told her, in my opinion, whenever something like VEDA comes along, a creative person's goal should be to, invariably, say this:

"Pfft, whatev.  Vlog every day?  I already do that. How about something that actually stimulates and challenges my creativity? Like, for example, Blog Every Day as Sex-Deprived Baptist Cow Wrangler with Attention Deficit Disorder and only one eyebrow.  Bitches."

The challenge can never be to sit in front of a camera and talk.  Anybody can do that and YouTube did a good job proving it.  The challenge is to turn sitting in front of the camera and talking into something interesting and engaging ... and if you're a self-proclaimed creative genius (like I am) the challenge has to be to take it to the next level, whatever that may be, so that you know in your gut that you're not contributing simply "more of the same".

Stay creative, guys ... and remember that I'm watching ;)

I have two things I want to talk about and one of them you probably won't care about.

The thing you will care about is the follow-up on my last post about recycling the old videos.  It turned out to be probably the most discussed blog I've ever written (granted, that does include my reply comments, but still--many thanks to all who commented and shared their thoughts!).

Heather-Maria and Obsquatch came down squarely on the other side of the fence, which was pretty much expected.  Tipp commented much along the same lines, although he managed to put it in a far more convincing way than Heather-Maria and Obsquatch combined.

The best comment, by far, came from Ibrahim who took the time to acknowledge the conflict between the community and commercial aspect of my channel.  Yes, my goal is to utilize youtube to facilitate my productions, but I also want to eventually leverage all of this into a career and that does take a certain level of planning and consideration.

Here's the conclusion I've reached (for now): the youtube channel will act as a repository for videos and nothing will be recycled.  Granted, I will probably delete the occasional video because it's just plain bad or whatever, but what won't happen is the whole deleting and reposting concept.  Instead, I very much like the idea of utilizing playlists and video responses to keep the older content active.

In the news you probably won't care about, I think I've found something of a good rhythm for my creative work.  Don't expect some kind of regular schedule for videos, though, I'm talking about the actual work I put into the productions/

See, with production of the Christopher Mast Story, I pretty much found myself planted in front of the computer sometime in the evening and working into the night, after the girl had gone to bed.  This struck a good balance between work, the personal life, and the creative work.

Now that CMS is done and we're not quite ready to start on the next one, I'm taking the time I spent at night to edit and cut the show together to, well, write the next show.

In other words, instead of scrambling to find time to write new material, I've worked out a convenient amount of allotted time every evening to just sit down and write.

Now, all of my time writing won't be spent on Talking Heads (although, right now I need to bang out the next four episodes ASAP).  For the past few weeks, I've been outlining and jotting down notes for a project called "Destructive Criticism" (a title I lifted from a comment Obsquatch made at some point).  Right now, the project is in the form of a novel, though I can't say for certain that's where it will stay.  I'm writing it much like I would write a script, so I believe the format will be very fast and easy to digest.  The story, I think, will appeal pretty strongly to the youtube crowd.

Josh and Jamie are brothers who write and produce competing shows on youtube (through a jointly-owned and operated production company).  They've both enjoyed a respectable amount of success from their efforts and are about to score the holy grail of internet production start-up financing: a seven-figure sponsorship deal with a up-and-coming energy drink.  On the path to this holy grail, their entire world melts down around them starting with malfunctioning relationships with their significant others and coming full circle when their father--the person who helped them start their production company in the first place--is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Yeah ... and that's pretty much all that I have right now.  I'll keep you posted.

I should probably save this for krumbinesBRAIN, but I figure I'll just use bits and pieces anyway ... or maybe I'll just use this as a script for later.

At any rate, have you heard what's been going down at YouTube?  Everyone is crying "HULU!" and are having panic attacks. Have you noticed how anytime youtube changes something, the self-proclaimed community has a collective panic attack?  The most recent was the whole algorithmically-demoted videos that may or may not contain offensive material.  This was quickly labeled censorship and the community pulled out their paper backs to breathe into.  The criminal offense of this "censorship" was simply how youtube continued to fuck with top 100 lists ... and yes, have you noticed how inconsequential those lists have become?  Now more so than ever, if you're not Fred, a top 100 list means jack-shit.)

Which is fine by me.

Kind of.

I've had an idea percolating in my mind for some time now ... it was the alternative to the "Start Here" playlist and something I had, in fact, done before.

Follow me on this one.

What if serious content-producers actually treat our youtube channel pages like television channels and cater more to people looking at their subscription boxes on a daily basis than to our over-all library on youtube?

What I'm talking about is constantly rotating content.  The problem is that three months ago I had 80 subscribers ... half of them might have watched all fifty some-odd videos I had posted.  Today I have just under 350 subscribers and I would venture to say that the vast majority have only seen a handful of my nearly 100 videos posted.

So what's the point of leaving a video online if no one is going to watch it much past that first week or two?

This was why I put together the "Start Here" playlist ... as a way to drive eyeballs to some of my more deserving videos.

But really, once a video has passed its two-week mark and has reached all the subscribers who are going to watch it, what viability does it pose?

Why not remove it and repost it in a month?  For me, that means taking a video that maybe got 60 views and today putting in front of 350 sets of eyeballs.  Next month, that 350 might have grown into 600 ... 300 more people who might not have any idea what Beanie Boy is much less why people like to call me a puppet fucker.

Stay tuned to your subscription box, those answers will be coming at you this Monday at 8pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The other positive aspect behind constantly rotating content, is that for lion's share of your subscribers, that's fresh new content on a daily basis (or however frequently you choose to post).  Certainly beneficial if you're in a production funk or if you're working on a big project that's simply taking time to finish.

Let me anticipate the criticism of this idea ...

1. "I've been watching you from the beginning and don't want to watch some things over again.  I wanna see fresh content, not old stuff."

This is going to be the one point that I remain very cognizant of.  Rotating and recycling your content is an opportunity to get rid of the shit.  If you're committed to reposting only your quality content, and a subscriber is adamant about only new material ... it raises the question about the quality of support you're getting from this subscriber in the first place.  I can name a handful of my own subscribers who not only would cheer over this opportunity to have the old videos they had never taken the time watch served up to them in their sub box, but would happily rate, watch, and comment on the ones they had already seen if not to just support my work, than because they truly love the video (I'm talking about Novanine and the Beanie Boy Show and probably Ibrahim and EVERYTHING else).

2. "I don't want to lose comments/ratings!"

Reposting will, in fact, wipe out the comments and ratings.  One can be a bad thing (the comments) and the other can be a good thing/irrelevant thing (the ratings).

I say this: nothing is sacred.  You'll wipe out the comments?  So what?  There's a copy of practically all of them in your youtube inbox and your email.  Plus, exactly how many "LOL" or "that was great!" comments do you really need to preserve?

Some of us had been hit by the down-rating bot.  Recycling content gives us an opportunity to clear out those niggling-little one and two star ratings.  But ultimately, what difference do the ratings mean, anyhow?  Truth be told, this is a feature that I can pretty much do with out.

3. I can't think of anymore negative things right now.  Can you?

I'd apologize for the long post, but if brevity is what you're after, you should be reading my twitter!

And now, not because I'm a trend whore but because I must justify throw-away words that were posted in random comments across youtube, I bring you the tale of The Darkside of Krumbination vs. The Nerdfighters.

But before we do that, tell me if this is a good title for a movie: "Zombie Jesus vs Alien Shit Slugs 9: Guess Who's (Second) Coming to Dinner?"??  The idea is that the alien shit slugs from outer space invade a quite little bible camp that's across the lake from, um, a stripper boot-camp.  Yeah!  That's good ... and humanity's last chance at survival is zombification through the undead Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Oh, and by the by, happy Easter, kids!

If you pay any attention to my immediate youtube circle, you know what the Darkside is, what Krumbination is, and--if you're REALLY good--you know what Beanyism is.  You might even be vaguely aware of Nerdfighters, although that has nothing to do with my youtube circle but that explains why I myself am vaguely aware of them.

Heather-Maria suggested we take on the Nerdfighters.  To which I responded with: "Krumbination vs Nerdfighters battle ROYALE!!!" (or something equally as retarded).

At which point, these random ramblings were picked up by an apparent legion of the Nerdfighter, er, legions ... Obsquatch, who immediately found himself torn between the proverbial light and dark side of the force.

Obsy provided an interesting, hypothetical breakdown of what might happen should the Darkside and the Nerdfighters actually wage war.

Let me just say ... it wasn't pretty.  For the Darksiders.

Obsquatch went into great detail on how many Nerdfighters the Four Horsemen would each subdue in this hypothetical battle.  (The Four Horsemen of the Darkside being myself, Heather-Maria, Middlebrook, and Sabino--Depointless.  Although, at this point I think KatConfidential would be a better horseman with her four foot penis that squirts chocolate milk.)  Ultimately, though, Obsy proclaimed the Nerdfighters would win the day.

Hypothetically, of course.

Heather-Maria was quick to point out that Obsquatch is a fucking backstabbing traitor.

I'm more keen to point out that this whole battle royale is hypothetical and, were it to actually unfold, the Darksiders would ultimately win.  Let me tell you why:

First, in case you hadn't caught on yet, Obsquatch's analysis is purely hypothetical.  None of the details he points out will ever having any bearing on the actual battle.

Mainly because the Nerdfighters will never receive an invitation.

Which is not to say that there WON'T be a Battle Royale ... just that the Nerdfighters won't be invited and the Darksiders will win by default.

Hey, c'mon, we're the Darksiders--no one ever said we'd play fair.

Now, let's assume that the evil Nerdfighters somehow actually learned of the location of the battle royale ... tell me, what Nerdfighter would actually be stupid enough to show up?  Really?!  These people have GOT to have something better to do with their time.

And the shockingly few that do show up?  Hell, they were Darksiders to begin with and just didn't know it.

It's time to write a script, guys.  Here's how we're gonna do it: we've got the opening of the first episode already hashed out as well as the premise for the rest of the episode.  Use the comments here to continue to outline the rest of the story and write scenes.

The Revengers - 01

Dan spends a week at an office where his target is a IT instructor from hell.  He holds an Excel training class once a month and has a test that no one can ever get 100% on.  And if you get more than two questions wrong, he makes you retake the class.  The case is marked "ED" in the case file and ends after Dan shares a cup of coffee and some homemade muffins with the intructor before his class.

The result?  Explosive diarrhea, sick day, and everyone in the class gets a pass.

Sam's case target is a plastic surgeon who fired his office supervisor to hire a prettier girl who would work for less.  Sam slips to destroy the office manual that the client wrote--what the new girl would essentially need to do her job.  End result, pretty girl still gets the job, but the doctor is put through the ringer.

TITLES

A woman comes to hire Dan and Sam.  She hands them an envelope with pictures of her husband having sex with her sister on sheets that she bought for him for their anniversary--Egyptian cotton, 1200 thread count.

DAN
Are these pictures in sequential order?  Cause if they started doing this after doing that--

SAM
Oh, that's just wrong.

DAN
I was going to say nasty-squared.  But yours works, too.

If you hadn't noticed, I've been using twitter rather regularly for the past few weeks.  I like it.  For the most part.

Twitter fills little gaps in my interaction with the online creative community.  Between videos on youtube, there's twitter.  Between blog posts, there's twitter.  One example of how I'm utilizing twitter to further engage the creative community is revealing the ever-popular challenge video details a day or so earlier to my followers on twitter.  A small step, to be sure, but it works.  I also get to utilize it to notify when there's a new blog post--well, let me explain that.

Youtube has subscriptions and people check those on a daily basis.  Twitterers keep tabs on an hourly basis.  This blog, while it has its regular readers, still requires you to check on it periodically for updates.  I have no notification system whatsoever.  Twitter provides that notification.

Whether or not anyone cares to be notified about a new blog post remains to be seen ... one would imagine that if they are interested enough to follow my twitter, they would be interested enough to read a blog, yes?

So after a few weeks of regular use, it's my opinion that twitter is a functional tool that can be very helpful ... when it's put to good use.

Which leads us the fugly side of twitter.

I don't like trends.  I really, REALLY don't like trends.  Twitter, for all its good, is VERY trendy right now.  I gave up on myspace because it was a stupid trend and I never embraced Facebook because it was way painfully trendy.  I tend to automatically dislike the things that the whole of the world's population likes.

Like American Idol.  I just don't get it.

One of the problems with being trendy is that everyone and their mother signs up for it.  Which results in millions of dead accounts.  Now, it's not exactly like I care if someone doesn't use there account or not, but isn't that one of the prevailing issues on youtube?  Inactive accounts diluting your subscription count?  Another problem with all these inactive twitter accounts is that it's giving the platform a false sense of purpose.

Sure, twitter may HAVE 50 billion users, but really only about 6 million actually tweet.  (Those numbers a gross exaggerations meant only to illustrate a point.  There is no factual basis for those numbers nor, er, enough actual, um, people ... in the world.)

Of the entire population of twitter users, only a small fraction actually tweet.  Of those legit twitterers, an even smaller fraction tweet anything of substance.

Substance?  In 140 characters or less?

Like I said, twitter is a functional tool ... depending on how you choose to USE IT.

The fugly part about twitter is that it's full of tweets like this:

"Im eating a banana."

or

"Why am i awake?"

or

"I like pie."

I understand that the premise of twitter is based on answering the question "What are you doing?" but utilizing this microblogging platform for such utterly inept, baseless texting is not only embarrassing but unfair to the people who might actually find you interesting.

All that said, I do like twitter.  It serves a distinct purpose for ME and also provides an handy way to stay in touch with friends I've made throughout the world.  If you can look at the service critically and not only answer "What are you doing?" but "How can I make this work for me?" then I think you could have a good experience with it.  If not, well, there's always tumblr.

Stay creative.  And inventive.

If you've been paying any attention whatsoever to my twitter page, you'd have noticed that not only did I recently break 10,000 views on my youtube channel, but I also broke past the magical 300 mark in subscribers.

Why is 300 magical?  No reason, really, but it's a hundred more than 200, so that's saying something.  Also, it's important to keep in mind that after about two years on youtube as "jordancg" I closed out that account and started fresh as "krumbine".  This was back in October of last year.

About a month ago (March 2nd, to be exact) I hit the 200 mark.  Since youtube partnership has forever been one of my goals (I applied once under my old account but didn't have an inkling of a shot at it) I told myself last month that I would try again, for the first time as krumbine, when I hit the 300 mark.

That happened yesterday.

I applied for partnership yesterday.

If you're not familiar with the youtube partner application (and I think this was actually a new feature) the first thing you see is an "automated response" indicating whether or not your application is "likely" to be accepted.  No doubt this automated suggestion is based solely subscriber count and total video views (and other inconsequential numbers that bare no representation to your creative SOUL).  After you click "yes" to continue your application, there's a number of check boxes to select and other silly options.  Finally, there's a box where you're supposed to type an explanation as to why you want to join the partner program.

This, I believe, is a practical joke by YouTube.

I wrote three short paragraphs, outlining my work for both Victor and Christopher Mast.  I talked about the collaborative nature of my channel and the way I engage the creative community.  Finally, I put a bow on this brief narrative by explaining how it was my hope that the partner program would help develop future opportunities to create original content with and for youtube's creative community.

After clicking to submit the application, I was rewarded with an error message stating that my narrative could only be 512 characters long.

Do you see the funny, now?

At any rate, I took a few minutes to rewrite my narrative and officially submitted my application for partnership on the evening of April 6, 2009.

I don't think it will go anywhere.  And after your application is denied, you have to wait two months before reapplying.

My hope, however, is that a person will actually take the time to review the facts and take stock of what I've been developing on my channel.  I hope that an individual will look at this application and appreciate the fact that I was solicited by two YouTube partners to produce episodic content for their respective content (YouTube Rejects, on Victor's channel, is close to breaking 50k views).

I know it won't happen, but I still have a small glimmer of hope.  And with the way things have been exploding lately, can you imagine what the playing field will look like two months from now?

Just a quick update.  A lot of people have been asking about it and it's been promised for a long time ... and it's finally here!  Feast your eyes on the official "Fuck you, Krumbine!" t-shirt!  It's available in both men and women styles. I decided to give you the best of both worlds (in true spirit of krumbinesBRAIN??), so click the link to see what's on the back of the shirt!

Oh, what a glorious morning.  Not only am I sitting on ten pages of The Revengers comic (that's right, TEN pages of genuine comic book art) that is effectively re-invigorating the entire project like a shot of andrenaline straight to the heart, but I came across a bit of written material on the interwebs that just BEGGED for some kind of response.

Now, for the longest time I haven't paid a second's worth of attention to my brother's website and his online activities.  It wasn't worth it.  I've tried to engage him in the past and things always wind up in the same place.  Basically, we don't see eye-to-eye and, frankly, we never will.  But that doesn't mean I can't have some fun, er, poking fun at him.

Plus, you guys get a meaningful blog that's longer than 140 characters.  Groovy, huh?

To kick things off, I'll share a quote (which will link to his heavily-monotized website ... a link that you DO NOT need to click.  In case you've been brainwashed with a twitterized attention-span, I'll repeat: you DO NOT need to click over to his website).

"I’m sure you’ve all read the stories by now. Over the weekend Obama and his cronies ousted the CEO of GM and gave Chrysler a 30 day notice to shape or else. Obama’s decided he’s going to the run the automaker industry in addition to running the country.

You can see why I might be a little upset."

If ever there was a thesis statement to a person's life, well, this probably wouldn't be it for Jason, but it sure as hell exposes a lot about him.

First, I have to point out the obvious.  This guy has dedicated his website to the hawking of his books.  I can tell this because of the "Books" column that runs down the right-hand side of the page with large, uninspired graphics of the book titles.  What's ironic about this observation is the fact that Jason, a self-proclaimed "best-selling" author (well, I suppose if you use flexible standards, anyone can become a "best-selling author") fails to even proof-read his own blog.  It's peppered with grammatical errors, missing words, confused sentences and other gross, technical innacuracies.  For someone who is trying to sell himself as an author (and subsequently sell his books) it's not a good idea to paint a picture of yourself as a bad writer.  Just my personal, humble opinion.

But let's talk about the meat of his argument.  I realize that many of my readers don't reside in the United States, but I think most are still aware of what's going on with the auto industry and certainly the results of our recent presidential election.  (Quick note: I'll be very interested in both Obs' and Heather's take on this.)

Wait a sec ... I forgot, that was one of my problems with Jason's blog ... there was very little meat.  In fact, after stewing on this for a good twenty-eight seconds, I've come to the conclusion that his blog was not meant to be an angry observational piece on big government's takeover of the US auto industry, but in fact a very subtle comedic SPOOF of "angry" style blogs.

See, Jason's primary thesis is that he's angry.  Fair enough.  But about what?  At first he claims he's angry about Obama "taking over" the auto industry (his words, not mine!).  Then he suggests that he's simply angry at Obama because, well, Obama is a socialist pig and will destroy our country (not EXACTLY his words, but I think it's a fair assumption).  The problem with these sources of anger comes later when he cites more sources of anger: the fact that the car companies went to the government in the first place--wait, no, because the government bailed them out in the first place--wait no, that's not right, either--because we elected a black man president (oops, he never actually said that, so yes, that's implied racism right there)--waitwaitwait (sorry), he's angry (so much so he wants to scream--his words, not mine) because Obama is in office for another eight years and will likely have Congress abolish presidential term limits.

Wait, what?

Alright, I know I shouldn't poke too hard ... in the past, my metered and reasonable criticism of publicly posted opinions and comments from people like this have in fact resulted in tears.  I can be a down-right, big ol' meanie sometimes, I know.

So let me gently and calmly COMPLIMENT something Jason actually did write:

"I suspect the man uses copies of the Constitution to wipe himself.

Was that a little extreme?

Well, so was taking over the auto industry."

What a well-constructed metaphor!  Simply brilliant!  Kudos!

*ahem*

Brilliant, that is, if somewhere in the blog, the concept of the government taking over the auto industry was established as extreme ... much less established in the first place.  Granted, I try not to innundate myself with current affairs, but the way I've read the news story is that President Obama is mandating that GM and Chrysler meet the terms of the original loan agreement within 30-60 days, or he will force them into bankruptcy court which will result in them MEETING THE TERMS OF THE ORIGINAL LOAN AGREEMENT.

Excatly how is this "taking over" the auto industry?

Look, if you wanna be angry about the state of the nation, good on you.  If you wanna be angry about everyone and their mother getting a bailout, good on you.  If you wanna be angry about how your underwear smells bad after you've worn it for three days straight, well, maybe you should do laundry more often, but nevertheless: good on you.

But don't bill yourself as a writer and then compose a near incomprehensible argument as to why you're angry about these things when the essential gist of your reasoning is "Ummm, BECAUSE!"

And if you wanna get angry at people criticizing your work, good on you.  Do something about it.

Finally, in anticipation of the criticism that WILL be coming, in case you missed it, the thesis of this blog was to make fun of the WRITER of the linked blog.  Also, I know there will also be criticism about giving him ANY extra attention ... but what can I say?  Truthfully, he could use a little more attention and, well, I'm feeling generous today.

Cheers.