foolishnotions.net

don printy just sent me the following awesome and amazing response to an email i sent out earlier today to my tech team outlining the details surrounding next sunday’s set load for imagine christmas. i printed it out an posted it on the breakroom refrigerator and in the sound booth. enjoy…

From: Don Printy
Sent: 12/4/2007 12:04:51 PM
To: Carolyn Mejia
Re: FW: Imagine Christmas Set Up Information

Vernacular Prohibition Notice:

All Rock Staff will be prohibited from using the words “amazing” or “awesome” for the period of thirty consecutive days even in light of the current state of extreme excitement/giddiness. Use of a Thersaurus for alternative expressive words/phrases is highly recommended.

This notice brought to you by: The Committee for the Ethical and Non-repetetive Use of Exclamatory Words and Phrases.

thank you soooooo much, don! btw - love your take on the word “thersaurus”.

i know, i know… i have a ton of stuff to do and should be working. but i have to post this.

cam drew me this picture yesterday (it was one of about 20 ) anyway, here is the conversation that ensued…

“ooh, i like this one. thanks. do you want to be an actor and move to hollywood someday?”

“yeah, just until i’m married.”

“what do you want to do after you’re married?”

[no hesitation] “then i want to be a street car racer.”

here’s an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…
(so you know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God

“All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-rightousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England.

…Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

here’s an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…

(so you know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God

“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

i follow blogs for quite a few people i have never met. mostly leaders who share a similar field of work as me. i even follow some of their twitters. i have found that after a while i develop a weird kind of familiarity. but i know they don’t know me. sometimes i want to comment, but i don’t because i think it might make them feel weird, or they might think i’m weird. or worse, that i’m just trying to get a link to my blog on their site. i have found, since blog commenting isn’t really set up to be a good two way dialog, the return silence can be deafening. i know people who get a lot of traffic can’t possibly reply to everything and still live their lives… i get that and wouldn’t expect them to. really, just want to know if people like comments from strangers - and how they prefer to be addressed.

so this (these) is (are) my question(s):

1. do you comment on strangers’ blogs?
2. do you keep it formal or casual?
3. do you comment on personal things they post, or just the general professional kind of stuff?
4. if you have a blog… how do you want strangers to interact with you on both personal and level?

of all my posts i’ve written to date - this is the one i really want feedback on the most from everyone…
- especially, if you don’t know me…
- double especially if you get comments from a lot of people you don’t know….
- triple especially if you are one of the blogs that i follow, you don’t know me & you get comments from a lot of people you don’t know.

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s [God's] will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” - C.S. Lewis

Every Saturday my family and I go to the library downtown. I really look forward to this day. We always stay for at least an hour - sometimes more. We all love to read. And Cam likes to play the computer games. I usually peruse the stacks for something totally random to distract my busy brain. Today I walked by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I love this book. I read it for the first time when I was about 15. C.S. Lewis is absolute genius…. he is hands down one of my very favorite authors. Anyway, I checked it out to read it again. I’ll probably drop a few more quotes from Uncle Screwtape from time to time. I suspect a lot of you have read it - it’s pretty popular. But if you never have - - i highly recommend. The premise: it’s a collection of letters (obviously, fictional) from a demon character named Screwtape to his demon understudy Wormwood. He is basically mentoring him on how to screw with human minds in order to keep them from falling into the enemy’s (God’s) hands. Outstanding.

Great stocking stuffer, too!

Hey everyone! If you go to The ROCK, or you live in the Wilmington, NC area and have heard about Imagine Christmas and are excited - - and you have a blog… We could really use your help!!! We are down to the wire and we need to get the word out. I happen to know there are a ton of ROCK bloggers out there… and you guys have the potential to generate a tremendous amount of online buzz. How? Search Engines… don’t be scared- - read on.

OK — why? Imagine with me… Some family is doing a google search to find something festive to do over the weekend. They pull up google and type “christmas event wilmington nc” into the search field. If we have all done what I will suggest below… they will have LOTS of opportunities to find Imagine Christmas because the first few result pages will be littered with our blog posts about Imagine filled with great content from multiple perspectives.

Now, before I give my list of suggestions I want to say one more thing. I really get the impression that some bloggers think it’s really not important for their blogs to be “ranked” by search engines. I guess people start getting a little squirrelly when they have to start labeling everything to get ahead in placement. It goes against our grain as Christians to get ourselves to the top of any list. We feel like we are being prideful or something. But, let me tell you - - if you are at all interested in reaching people with those words God put in your heart and you painstakingly brooded over before you got up the nerve to click publish… pursuing good search engine placement is not only important - - it’s a waste of your time not to. Remember… we’re not out to reach our friends here. They already get it. We are here to be a real voice of truth and love to people who find themselves without any of their own. So yeah, what I am about to share with you is not only important for Imagine Christmas… it’s important for all your blogging.

Ok, here’s what you do… (I know some of you will read my list below and think I’m talking in some strange code language… i’ve been accused of that plenty of times before. I’ve really tried to keep it simple. It’s really not too painful. Just take your time to read carefully and do what you can understand.)

1. Blog about your observations about what is going on for Imagine Christmas. Content is key here… make it interesting - from your point of view. If you have volunteered or are a cast member, tell about what you’ve been up to.
2. Everytime you mention Imagine Christmas or The ROCK make it a link. Even if you mention it 5 times… link every one to therockchristmas.com or the rockwilmington.com.
3. Use images from therockchristmas.com… anything you want. Or take your own behind the scenes shots and use them in your posts (don’t give away anything too juicy though- just tease a little ). Don’t forget to link your images too.
4. Fill out the “description” field for your links and your images with descriptive key words like, “Imagine Christmas event at The ROCK church Wilmington, NC”. It doesn’t have to be that exactly… just use words that are pertinent to your links and images, and are also keywords that you would use if you were to google to find a Christmas Event to Attend in Wilmington, NC.
5. Other good keywords to use throughout your posts… event, production, christmas, wilmington, nc, cape fear, performance, dance, live music, theater, drama, church, program…. you get the idea. And as many of them as you can in the very first paragraph is best. The farther up on the content of your page the keywords occur - the better. If you have access to your meta keywords and descriptions these will help you. (if you have no idea what the word “meta” means…. just disregard this part and do the rest… )
6. Refer your readers to therockchristmas.com for behind the scenes updates, photos and directions.
7. The Invite a Friend feature is up and running on therockchristmas.com. Tell everyone you know. Include a link to the Invite a Friend page in your posts so your readers can invite their friends too.
8. Give your posts a good title - using key words in your post title is good for search engine placement.
9. Post often. It doesn’t have to be long. Just interesting. Use pictures, good keywords and don’t forget to link everytime.
10. Be sincere. Where I am suggesting we pay attention to the key words we include in our content and our linking… I am not suggesting we fill our posts with hype. Just write as you normally would and pay close attention that you are getting the most out of every word. It’s easy - - promise.

P.S… if you have your own wordpress domain - - not a free one - - and you have not installed the SEO Plugin. I HIGHLY recommend you do it. I have found it to be golden for search engine placement. If you don’t have your own domain yet and are serious about your blogging I highly recommend you upgrade and install SEO.

P.S.S… i have intentionally broken my own rules with this post because the sheer number of keywords and links would cause it to probably come up number one… and I don’t know that I really want this post to be the number one thing they see about Imagine Christmas. So I have intentionally broken my own rules here… in case you were thinking i didn’t notice.