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I hate lies, and I hate just about everything that doesn’t hate lies. We live our lives enmired in lies — in hoke, in smoke, in hints and allusions and innuendoes, in juice and hustle and jive — and it is entirely too easy to become one of the liars, de facto, without really intending to. My post on linking is one of the best things I wrote this year, and it’s apposite to the discussion I’ve been carrying out all week:

People are so used to marketing trickery that they expect it everywhere. The challenge for anyone seeking to change minds in the Web 2.0 world is to take away that expectation. Transparency doesn’t mean I am obliged to disclose to you the color of my underwear. Transparency means that if there is any possibility that you could entertain the smallest doubt that I am effecting some kind of sleight of hand to trick you into doing something you otherwise would not do, I have to give you the means of eradicating that doubt to your own satisfaction.

On Christmas, because of the latest episode of puerile posturing, I said to Teri, “I believe in Christmas. I won’t let it lie to me.” Later it came out as, “I believe in humanity. I won’t let it lie to me.” And the final form, I think, is, “I believe in life. I won’t let it lie to me.” That’s the architecture of this year’s Christmas story. Now all I need is the story.

I smile to myself at all the ways my life has conspired to put me where I am right now: A philosophically-adept obsessive writer, enraptured by the most beautiful and rigorous kind of ethics, with a background in high-volume, high-tech publishing problems, who works as a real estate broker and who spends much of his time thinking about the marketing of everything. Where would I be, by now, but here? It’s funny for me to watch people try to whimper-whip or brow-beat me into echoing their lies — after I’ve told them every way I can think of that I would rather die than take a position I don’t hold down to my last atom — but that’s just part of the same thing.

On top of everything else my life has taught me, I end up knowing everything there is to know about how people get sucked and suckered into being yet another one of the life-liars, without ever really intending for that to happen.

In that respect, I am the best friend you could ever hope for, if you’re paying attention. I live my life as a challenge, deliberately, but most of us don’t want that kind of conflict in our lives. I don’t like it, but I also don’t hate it — and I rebel against any implication that, by my silence, I am accepting or going along with the lies. Much of what I do here consists of pointing out how to avoid becoming entangled in error — willful, intentional, self-destructive error. Certainly this post is of a piece with that objective.

Every bit of this is easy for me. I’ve been training for this job for thirty years. The hard job is yours: You have to renounce that world of cloying, addicting lies. In the world of lies, all you have to do is “play ball” — all you have to do is go along to get along — and, just like that, everything is yours — buddies, laughs, trinkets. You won’t like much of what you hear here, but that’s no surprise. No one wants to have his corruption called to mind, again and again, so you have to shut your mind to the voices you can’t shout down.

This strikes me as being a very poor choice in every possible respect. I can’t think of anything that can be gained in exchange for giving up your sovereignty that could be worth it. We talk about “selling your soul” to gain eternal life or vast riches or unequaled artistic talent. But what really happens is that people renounce their own minds and run in herds for nothing — for the false security of not having to stand alone. And then, when the herd turns on them, they have nowhere at all to turn.

The world I live in is not easier than that one, but it’s better. You may not have any buddies, but you will have the opportunity to make true friends — people who will not lie to you, for you or about you. You won’t share in the herd’s tittering xenophobia, but the absurdity of unminded human beings is comedy enough for anyone. As for the trinkets — how does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his own soul?

It’s not kind of me to express things this baldly. I believe I am just, but, because I am just, I know that softening the truth is just another kind of lie. There is no benefit to either of us in my trying to make things easy for you.

But do consider this: You are all alone. I can’t see you right now, nor can anyone else. I am a master of this medium because I understood all of this, perfectly, thirty years ago. I can muck around inside your mind like this, and you’ll let me, because you are alone, because I can’t see you — can’t see what you shrink from and can’t see what you long to embrace.

That’s a comfortable way to take on difficult ideas, actually, since there is no way anyone outside your mind can hold you accountable for a commitment — unless you make it manifest. But at least in potential, that is the lie that precedes all the others. Every single one of us wants to live as a hero, holding firm — proudly, defiantly — against every possible form of domination. And yet so many of us cave and cave and cave to the most pitiful of demands.

What accounts for the difference between the life you imagine and the life you actually lead? I think it’s whether or not you have made your commitment to human sovereignty manifest — given it an existence apart from your imagination. It’s a simple enough thing to say, out loud, “I won’t back down.” But until you actually do say it, you will back down, again and again.

I hate the lies, I hate the herds, I hate the mobs. I feel shame for the way people behave when they’re running in mobs. But I love you more than you can ever imagine the way you are right now — with your mind open to me, even if only in secret and in solitude.

I conceal nothing, and so I have never hidden the fact that I am a subversive. Why am I doing this, why am I talking to you like this on New Year’s Eve? The answer is, “So you’ll remember.”

Again and again you see people trying to shut me up or shout me down, trying to smear or insult or browbeat me into telling their particular flavor of lies. And again and again you see them getting nowhere. There is nothing that I’m doing that you cannot do just as easily. All you have to do is say “No” — and mean it — and other people can have no power over you.

Tomorrow is the first day of 2009, and I want to be in your head all year long. Every time someone tries to maneuver you into doing something you know is wrong, I want you to think of this post. Every time people try to court or cajole or bribe you into telling a lie, I want you right back here. Every time that you feel that you’ve stained your soul, I want you to remember this night. And every time you stand firm for what you know is right, no matter what pressure is brought against you, I want you to think of this moment.

You can’t shut me up and you can’t shout me down. But if you have the guts to pay attention to me, I can show you how to live the life you have always loved so much in your imagination.

I wish you health, wealth, happiness — and the most scrupulous kind of honesty — for the New Year!

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Courtney at the speed of life

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Lord-a-mercy!” I said in my thickest southern drawl. “Somebody tell god to take the rest of the week off. He has made perfection, and there ain’t no topping that!”

The beautiful blonde woman scowled and blushed at the same time. It made her look seventeen again.

“Where is you charming husband? I can’t believe he’d ever dare to leave your side.”

She shook her head gravely, and maybe that was my cue to lay off. Or maybe not…

“Well, tell me what you boyfriend looks like, then. So I’ll know who to run from.”

She chuckled. “No boyfriend.”

“Well, then, the next man that asks, you tell him I’m sprouting gray hairs in patches and I carry a little paunch. I’m half-a-step slower than I never was. I’m ugly as sin, and I stink something awful toward the end of the day. You tell him that’s my description.”

She drew a finger across her eyebrow, the hair so fine it was almost white. Her eyes were blue and deeper than a quarry lake, alive with the light of mischief. “Am I to take that as an offer?”

I nodded gravely. “What fool could pass on perfection?”

She smiled a wistful little half-smile. A woman with a secret, a woman with a story to tell. “I think it was you…”

I wanted to stay and talk but somebody pulled me away. It was a New Year’s Eve party at my sister’s house. I was the guest of honor, the prodigal son returned, and I hadn’t seen some of the revelers for twenty years. I kept getting bounced around the room, passed like the torch of sobriety from one drunk to the next. But my eyes always sought her out, sought her supple perfection amidst all that was chaotic and deformed. She moved like liquid glass, like a cat, like a leopard. Her hands preceded her always, and she caressed everything with long, slender fingers. It was as though she had the power of vision in her fingertips, and she saw more than you or I will ever see with mere eyes.

She moved, and she graced the universe with her touch, with her glance. She made me hungry, hungry in a way I haven’t known in more years that I care to think about, hungry for things I walked away from a lifetime ago…

And then she was gone.

I jerked my head around stupidly, peering into every corner, but I knew she was gone. I was surprised at the loss I felt, and I thought about just letting it drop. But then I grabbed my coat off a bed and busted out into the freezing night.

I hollered up the icy hill, “I’m following you, pretty lady! I ain’t gonna let you get away!” I couldn’t see her, but I knew where she was. I always knew where to find her…

I never chased her up that hill, and I never chased her down it. But for three nights in a row, a lifetime ago, she stood with me all the way down at the bottom of that hill. All the way down at the river. Tossing pebbles into the water. Weeping with me for my dead.

It was the Summer I discovered sadness. It was the Summer when everything changed. It was the moment of glowing perfection just before the dawning, when all of life is a stark silhouette, a black mystery against a golden aura in the instant before the sun ruins everything by making it obvious and banal. It was the Summer I left home.

Of course, no one ever really leaves home. We just walk away, coming back less and less often. And every time we come back, there’s less and less of the indiminishable everything we thought must always be there. Relatives die off one by one. Old friends move away. Schools and houses and buildings are abandoned, cackling through broken-toothed windows as we mourn them. Until one day, one very sad day, there’s nothing left at all, nothing but the memories we carry with us indiminishably, inextinguishably. Life begins but it never ends, and at the speed of life events have sequence but no duration, no expiration.

It was the Summer I discovered sadness. It was the Summer my grandfather died.

I had already left home once. Not for keeps, but I didn’t know that. I thought I was gone for good. I thought I was the top rider in a one-man rodeo, couldn’t nobody stop me ’cause nobody’d dare to try. I was nine parts foolish vanity and the tenth part groundless pride, but it was a fine and perfect pride. I taught haughty to flamenco dancers on the side, and they paid me in silver dinares. I pretty much figured I wouldn’t bother to go back home until I could return suitably laureled, hailed by herald trumpets.

In fact, I was living in a building too far gone to qualify as a tenement, but I was too stupid — and too proud — to be miserable. And then I got the word that my grandfather had died and I had to abandon all my worldly possessions — about twenty-nine dollar’s worth, net — and scurry back home to see him waked and buried.

I hadn’t known. I was the working prototype of a young idiot, and I hadn’t really known — in my guts, in my bones — that people could die. You read about it, you hear about it, you see it a dozen times a day on TV. But until death comes to someone you know, someone you love, someone you never doubted would always be there… I was numb and useless that first day of the wake. Couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even cry.

She was there at our house that night, there for my sister. Courtney Lancaster, the little girl on the hill. She was my sister’s age, a year-and-a-half older than me, and she’d always been around the house. Silky blonde hair in french braids, wrapped up around her head like the girl on the Swiss Miss box. In khaki shorts with cargo pockets and starched white blouses. And later in painter’s pants and denim work shirts with tiny mother-of-pearl snaps instead of buttons. In parkas and pea coats and watch caps and miner’s boots. In sandals and Summer suits and big floppy white hats. Her skin would tan to a golden brown in the Summer and the fine white hairs on her legs were never touched by a razor and I never thought a thing about it. Of all my sister’s friends, she was the one who seemed least like a girl. And therefore, by my standards at the time, most like a human being.

But now she was all woman. Her dad was a consulting engineer and she had spent a year in Europe with him. Knowing what I know now, I would have understood immediately that there was a man behind the metamorphosis. But at the time, I was stunned, even outraged. She was wearing camel’s hair slacks and a creamy white silk blouse, very fluid. Her hair was brushed and brushed and brushed until it seemed to glow with a light of its own. She wore no make-up, no jewelry, nothing to hide or cheat or disguise, nothing to detract or diminish or disfigure. I could hardly bear to look at her; I kept having to look away. It wasn’t lust, it was simply radiance. She was too blindingly beautiful to be looked at for long.

After dinner, she started flipping through my records and asking me questions about them. It surprised me, sort of, because I hadn’t known until then that it could be possible for a woman to be both beautiful and serious. The old Courtney-in-khakis could be serious, but Courtney-in-camel’s-hair? My sister was a little put out, too, even though I wasn’t doing anything — not then, anyway — to swipe her friend.

She spun up Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”, easily the best album since “Blonde on Blonde”. She stopped at “Simple Twist of Fate” and played it over and over again, and I thought my sister was going to tear out her hair. For my own part, I was charmed by her attentions, but I had other things I wanted to do.

I had my mom’s car keys and I spun ‘em on my finger. I said, “I’m going out for a while. You wanna come?” I didn’t know why I invited her, and I didn’t know why I was so delighted when she nodded and said she’d come along.

I knew of a liquor store where the clerk was drunk every night after eight o’clock or so. Never carded anyone, and couldn’t read the numbers even if he had. I scored us a quart of beer and drove her all the way down into the heart of the bottom. At the bottom of the hill there’s a little park platted out in the flood plain of the river. It’s good flat land and it makes a fine softball field come April, when it finally dries up. In the late Summer it’s dry as dust and the river’s hardly deep enough to soak your shoes. It’s dark and quiet and there was never anybody down there at night, nobody but me.

That first night we didn’t talk all that much, just nursed the beer and kicked some rocks around. I wanted to talk about my grandpa, but I kept choking up and I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I knew she had something she wanted to tell me about, too, but she was having troubles of her own. But we managed to find serenity in the comfort of an easy silence in the quiet of the night — crickets chirping, the river burbling, and, far off, the high white whine of the highway.

I dropped her off at her folks’ house, the fieldstone ranch house at the top of the hill. Without looking up from the steering wheel, I said, “Thank you, Courtney.”

“For what?”

I blew a puff of air at my nose. “I don’t know. Thanks for coming to the wake, thanks for being there for the family, all that stuff. But that’s not what I mean.” I took my time thinking and she let me. “What I want to thank you for is not posing. Does that make sense?”

She laughed. “Not a bit.”

“You’re not a pose, you’re not an act, you’re not a show. You’re just who you are all the time, so I don’t have to try to figure out who you want me to be. I can just be myself. All the time. I always liked you, but until tonight I didn’t know why. You’re whole enough to be quiet…”

“Maybe,” she said with the light of mischief in her eyes. “Or maybe I’m just empty. Nothing to say, and the good sense to say nothing.” She laughed, and she was beautiful in her laughter and she knew it.

She ate with us again the next night and she went out with me again. This time I didn’t even bother about the beer, I just drove straight to the river. We sat cross-legged on top of a picnic table, facing each other, bouncing a tennis ball back and forth between us. I was able to look at her, partly because I was more comfortable with her, and partly because it was so dark she could hardly blind me with her beauty. We sat there for most of the night, telling lies, telling jokes, telling the brutal truth in raucously funny ways. I can’t remember a single thing we said that night, but I’ll always remember it as the happiest night of my life. I can find my peace in solitude, in a cave or a canyon or just on a lonesome old road. But that was the one night of my life when I found a perfect peace in the company of another human being. My gift, my treasure, from Courtney Lancaster.

On the third day we buried my grandfather. Seventy-four years in the same one parish, and the monsignor himself said the words. Afterward there was a big blow-out at the house, a 16-gallon keg and a fat guy in a red satin vest with an accordion. Everybody who’d cried for my grandpa for three days wanted a chance to cheer, to lift a cup from sadness and raise it up to joy. To praise my grandfather for his virtues, and to praise those virtues of his that live on in those who loved him. And if you need to clear a knot of grief from your throat, a good way to do it is to make some noise.

We stayed for a while, but not too long. She left with me and I knew she would. I expect you can guess where we went.

It was a somber night at the river. The sky was shrouded in clouds and the air was sticky and close. I stood by the water and listened for the whine of the highway and I could hear her rustling behind me. I couldn’t bear to look at her, and I didn’t know why. That was when she told me about her man, the man behind the metamorphosis, the man she’d met in Europe. The way she described him he sounded much older, but we were so young that everyone seemed much older to me. She was flying back to join him the next day, a sort of trans-Atlantic elopement. Her parents were fit to be tied, but what could they do?

I had plans of my own, and I laid them out for her, still not daring to turn to look at her. After a while I tried to talk about my grandpa, about all the things we’d done together over the years. But my voice was rent by sobbing and I knew she couldn’t understand me. After a while I couldn’t understand myself, and I just stood there weeping, grieving for a man I’d never learned to love until it was too late.

I could feel her right behind me, could feel her breath behind my ear. I knew if I turned she’d hold me, and I could bury my grief within her. And I knew if she reached for me, I’d turn. But she didn’t reach and I didn’t turn. And after a minute or an hour or an eternity, I crouched down and grabbed a handful of pebbles. I started tossing them, one-by-one, into the water. In a moment I felt her move away.

A long time later she said, “I need to get going.”

I tossed her the car keys. “Take the car to my mom. Someone’ll give you a lift up the hill.”

“I can walk up.”

I nodded. “Or you can walk up.”

“What about you? What are you going to do?”

I smiled at her and the clouds parted and a glimmer of moonlight lit her radiance and blinded me everlastingly. “I’m going to miss you every day, Courtney Lancaster. I’m going to miss you every day from now until forever.”

She started to say something but I shook my head. I pressed a finger to my lips. “Walk away,” I said. “Walk away and don’t look back.”

She leaned over and brushed my cheek with her lips and as she pulled away I felt the downy fine hairs on her cheek and I caught the scent of her. No fragrance, just the essence of heaven itself.

And then she was gone.

I stood there tossing pebbles into the water until the dawn broke over the treetops. Then I walked along the bank of the river until I came to the highway bridge. I scrambled up the embankment and I started walking down that lonesome old road. And I never looked back…

She was waiting for me when I got to the top of the hill on that icy New Year’s Eve. The house was bigger than I remembered it, bigger and more imposing. It sat on four or five acres, surrounded by a split-rail fence. There were no stables or corrals, but everything about it said equestrian. There was a covered walk-through between the house and the garage and behind it was a huge fieldstone patio. Her dad had built a big brick barbecue and faced that in fieldstone as well. That was where I found her, sitting by that barbecue. She had built a fire and the heat of it kept the cold at bay. The flickering light chased the years away from her face and she looked to me like the little girl, the full-grown woman, who had blinded me in the moonlight twenty years before.

She smiled at me as I stood before her and I was blinded yet again. She said, “I’m glad you followed me.”

“You knew I would.”

She bit her lower lip. “I hoped you would.”

It was my turn to smile. I said, “I hate to be lied to, and you always tell the truth. Even when it’s the hardest. That’s what I’ve always loved about you.”

Maybe the word shocked her, I don’t know. I went on before she could stop me. “I have always loved you, Courtney. Every day, just like I promised.” I smiled a tight little smile, but the truth is there was a wetness in my eyes and a burning spot in my throat. “I loved you every day, and I never once let you know. You and my grandpa, I thought about you both every day. I wanted the two of you to be proud of me, and I wanted for you never to be ashamed of me. Everything I’ve ever done, I wanted to live up to you, to you and my grandfather. Doesn’t that seem stupid?”

Her own eyes were wet and she did nothing to hide it. “I don’t think so.”

“Courtney, my grandfather has been dead for twenty years. I haven’t sent you a card or a letter for twenty years. Not even a phone call. My grandpa can’t count my worth and I never gave you the chance. I walk around making this catalog of the absurd, but the true fact of my life is that I measure myself against two ghosts, a dead man and a lady who vanished. I have to laugh at myself, too, when I’m stupid. It’s only fair.”

She nodded and that was good enough.

I heard a noise behind me and I spun around to see two small creatures in bed clothes creeping up on us. The back door to the house was half open and I strode over to pull it closed. When I returned the two creatures were snuggled under Courtney’s arms. She said, “Permit me to introduce Samantha and Jennifer.”

Samantha was about nine, and she had inherited every ounce of her mother’s beauty and a drop or two more. She was dainty and ladylike and she wore a flowered flannel nightgown with tatted lace at the collar and cuffs. On her feet were fuzzy pink slippers.

Jennifer was seven or seven-and-a-half and she held title to every last acre of Courtney’s tomboy arrogance. She was beautiful in her own way, but she was more brash than anything. Her nightgown was an adult’s fleece sweatshirt, and she hadn’t bothered to pull her hands through the enormous sleeves. She had walked out on the freezing flagstones bare-footed, which I wouldn’t do on a bet.

I bowed to the waist and Samantha giggled. Jennifer snorted, and who could blame her?

Courtney said, “Why aren’t you guys in bed? Where’s the sitter?”

Jennifer scoffed. “Asleep on the sofa. Where else?”

“Oh. Great… Well, get it moving.”

Samantha wheedled, “Sing us a song first. Please.”

“No,” said Jennifer, a glint of evil in her eyes. “Make him sing.”

Courtney was about to intervene but I said, “I’ll be happy to. This is a song your mother used to like. I’m only gonna sing the first and last verses, ’cause I don’t care for the rest of it.” I cleared my throat and started to sing “Simple Twist of Fate”.

They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark.
She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones.
It was then he felt alone and wished that he’d gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

Courtney smiled at me and I thought my knees might buckle. Jennifer said, “You sing like a duck!”

I gave a solemn nod. “Proudly, like a duck.”

People tell me it’s a sin
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring.
She was born in Spring, but I was born too late.
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

Courtney coughed softly. “I was born in the Spring.”

“I know it.”

“What about you, mister?” Jennifer asked. “Were you born too late?”

“Why, no. I was born just in time. If I had been born even one minute later, who knows what might have happened?”

“What?”

I shrugged with my palms open at my shoulders. “Who knows?”

“He’s teasing you,” said Samantha.

I nodded. “You’d better go to bed, kids. You’ve met your match.”

Samantha giggled and Jennifer laughed derisively and I wanted to hug them both. Courtney dumped them off her lap and pushed them toward the house. I was sitting by the fire when she returned.

“They’re great kids, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

She smiled a tight, bitter little smile. “Their father didn’t seem to notice.”

I looked into the fire. “Where are your folks?”

“Colorado.”

“Your dad building a bridge?”

“A string of bridges. A brand new highway from Nowhere to Nowhere Heights. Your tax dollars at work.” She laughed. “Mother wants him to retire, but I don’t think he’s ready.”

I said nothing, just let the crackling of the fire fill up the silence. The night sky was clear and bursting with stars. The air was crisp and clean and very cold. After a long time, I said, “I’m at war with death.”

She smiled wryly and said, “Are there many casualties?”

“Go ahead. Make fun of me. I deserve it.”

“No,” she said. “Talk to me. Tell me what you never tell anyone.”

I nodded gravely. “I always have. I always will.” I took my time thinking and she let me. “I didn’t know what I was doing, when I started this. I wanted people to stop dying, but I didn’t know what I meant. It sounds stupid, right? People die, it’s a part of life.” I grinned despite myself. “The last part.”

She laughed like glass chimes tinkling in the Winter wind.

“But that wasn’t it,” I went on. “I’d see homeless people pushing shopping carts and sad, tired people shuffling along and little kids who wouldn’t look up from the ground, and I’d think — what I want is for people to stop dying before their time. But that’s what doctors do, isn’t it?

“And I got older. I hope I got wiser. And I got better and better at seeing what I’m talking about. And better and better at talking about it. And I got to a place where I could mesmerize people, just like a revival preacher, just like a snake charmer. And I’d talk and I’d talk and I’d talk and people would watch me and they’d say, ‘This man is crazy. This man is possessed. This man is god. This man is the devil.’ They’d look at me and say, ‘This man is right.’

“And I’d look back at them and I’d know I’d said just the opposite of what I wanted to. Because I didn’t want to tell them what I know, I want them to tell themselves what they had always known, without having to be told. And one day I realized that I had known all along what I wanted…”

She waited and waited, and finally she said, “Well?”

I shrugged. “I wanted them to stop dying while they were still alive.”

She nodded in recognition and I knew she would. And I knew the idea was new to her and I knew she’d known it forever, just like you have.

I pointed one by one at all the houses on the top of the hill. “There’s a story in every one of those houses. A story you’ve never heard before, except you know it by heart. And every one of those stories is tragic, and every one of them is comical, and every one of them is universal. Every one of those stories is different, and every one of them is the same. And every one of them is about nobody but you. You’re presented with the choice to live or die, and the story is which you chose and why.”

She didn’t feel pressed to say anything at all, and that’s the most amazing trait I’ve ever observed in any human being.

I said, “At the speed of light, events have sequence but no duration. Every point on the line of time is the same one point, and events occur in order, but they all happen at the same time. No before. No later. Just now. Forever.” I smiled brightly, because the idea is boundlessly funny to me. “I think about that, because all these stories seem so universal to me, and I wonder what universal might mean. When I write a story, I can freeze the people, I can freeze the events, I can leave it there like a trail marker, something that lasts forever. And when people respond to that, it’s not something I’m telling them. It’s something they’ve always known. We’re all made of star-stuff, millions and millions of years of accumulated nuclear waste. What if universal means something we all own from the birth of the universe? We seem so temporary. We’re born, we live, we die. But what if there’s a piece of forever inside each of us? Maybe that’s the thing that admits the truth. Maybe that’s the thing that discovers, again and again, the things we’ve always known…”

There were tears in her eyes and I was glad of that. There were tears in my own and my voice was broken; the best I could do was a sort of a croak. “I want to live forever, Courtney. I don’t ever want to die.”

She smiled at me and I saw her lovely hand on the arm of her chair and I wanted to pick up that hand and press it to my lips, just hold it there, forever. But I didn’t, and I knew why I didn’t. I said, “But I die with every choice I make. When I choose something, a vast array of futures open up before me. But a vast horde of other futures collapse and vanish, everything that might have happened, but won’t. All these lives in front of me. All these deaths behind me.” I laughed. “The stories are about nobody but me. I’m presented with the choice to live or die, and the story is which I chose and why.”

She traced a circle with her finger on the arm of her chair. She said, “You could stay here.”

I tried not to move. I tried not to react in any way at all.

She gave a nervous laugh. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I meant you could stay here in town, couldn’t you?”

I shook my head. “You’ll always be the lady on the hill. And I’ll always be the man with one foot in the next town.”

She said nothing, just stared into the fire. After a long time, I heard the report of a firecracker down the hill. I said, “I hadn’t intended that.”

“Intended what?”

More firecrackers, a whole string of them. “Happy New Year, Courtney.”

She smiled. “Happy New Year.”

“In a story, I could make this so much more… elegant.”

“Tuxedos and gowns, I would hope. And champagne.”

“No,” I said. “At the stroke of midnight, we’d each down a tiny little snifter of Grand Marnier, then smash the glasses in the fireplace.”

“And then what?”

“And then we’d kiss, the orange nectar still thick on our tongues.”

She said nothing for a long moment. “Do you want to kiss me…?”

“Here’s another story. Imagine a drunken hummingbird who’s gotten himself hooked on Grand Marnier. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

She said, “Why don’t you come over here and kiss me?”

I shrugged. “You can’t reach and I can’t turn.”

“I don’t understand that.”

I smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “Of all the people we went to school with, you and I are the only two who haven’t changed… They’re like trees bending in the wind or boats buffeted by the seas. But we are monoliths, and after twenty years we’re barely even weathered. That’s an accomplishment, isn’t it?”

“I see.” She smiled a tight, bitter little smile. “I’ll always be the lady on the hill, and you’ll always be the man with one foot in the next town.”

“That’s right.” The tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I didn’t try to hide them. “We made the right choices, both of us, and we have to live with them. Death is what happens when you make war on your life. Death is what happens when you betray who you are… A life defiled by a thousand small deaths, or death defied by an uncompromised life. That’s the story, isn’t it?”

I smiled at her and she looked up at me and she was the only woman in the universe, forever. I stood up, and she stood before me, just inches away. The fire lit her radiance and the depths of her beauty blinded me everlastingly. I said, “I’m going to love you forever, Courtney. I’m going to live forever, and I’m going to love you every day.”

She started to say something but I shook my head. I pressed a finger to my lips. “Walk away,” I said. “Walk away and don’t look back.”

She leaned over and brushed my cheek with her lips and as she pulled away I felt the downy fine hairs on her cheek and I caught the scent of her. No fragrance, just the essence of heaven itself.

And then she was gone.

I turned and walked down the hill, walked all the way to the highway. I walked my way down that lonesome old road, all those lives in front of me, all those deaths behind me. I walked away and I didn’t look back…

But you always know where to find me, don’t you? If I ain’t making cheese-burgers from all your sacred cows, then I’m running your fingers through the matted hair of yet another wretched untouchable. But at the speed of life events have sequence but no duration, no expiration, so I expect you can always find me unguarded in that moment of glowing perfection just before the dawning. Down at the river. Tossing pebbles into the water. Weeping for all my dead.

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This is the front

and back

face of a door-hanger we have going out in high-equity neighborhoods starting January 3rd. In most of Phoenix, for now, listing is essentially limited to short sales and lender-owned homes, so most of our time this year will be devoted to buyers. But if this card — or variations on it — can pull the way we want it to, it should be worth around $3,000 a week, net of all expenses. The lord knows we can use it.

Brian and I keep getting mail from people wondering why we’re going to be teaching weblogging at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. We’re not. All we ever teach is marketing — on-line, on paper and face-to-face. There is a piece to this door-hanger that you’re not seeing that should more than double its response rate. That’s marketing — and there is no one else in the real estate industry who teaches the kinds of marketing that Brian and I cover as a matter of course.

You can catch a preview of our marketing curriculum in Seattle on February 12th. We’ll be doing a free Unchained preview at Zillow HQ, 999 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA, on Thursday, February 12th from 1pm to 5pm. Scott Cowan is organizing the event with help from Drew Meyers and David Gibbons from Zillow. Marlow Harris will be joining us, along with some other Seattle blogging luminaries. The grand finale will be a debate between Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman and BloodhoundBlog iconoclast Greg Swann, moderated by Brian Brady, American Real Estate’s Number One Marketing Maven.

I gotta go. I’m showing this morning. But I wanted to remind y’all that today is the last day for a couple of big discounts on Unchained tickets. The Early-Bird price — $100 off — goes away altogether today. And the Unchained Alumnus discount will drop from $200 to $100 at midnight tonight. That’s $100 in savings, either way, for acting today.

Click the appropriate button below to sign up now.

CyberProfessionals: $397

Unchained Alumnus: $497 (you must act on this offer before 01/01/09)

Early-Bird Price: $597 (you must act on this offer before 01/01/09)

The full price for admission jumps to $697 tonight at midnight. If you’re planning to be with us, we’re making it worth your while to express that commitment today.

Phoenix? Seattle? Both? Can’t wait to see you in 2009!

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology

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Embrace the New Deal!  The Bailout has made its way to Main Street.

The Fed’s gonna do it..for real:

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it expects to begin operations in early January under the previously announced program to purchase mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and that it has selected private investment managers to act as its agents in implementing the program.

Under the MBS purchase program, the Federal Reserve will purchase MBS backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae; the program is being established to support the mortgage and housing markets and to foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally.

Here’s Sean Purcell and I, talking on BloodhoundBlog Radio, about today’s announcement (15 minute podcast)

PS:  Expect an orgy tomorrow and Friday, in the MBS markets….if the traders fly back from Cabo tonight

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How to slay dragons

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

And now I am a man-killer.

We live with the consequences of our choices, and we cannot fail to live with all the consequences of all our choices. Sic semper nobis, sic etiam mihi. Thus always to us, thus even to me.

Your money? Or your life? Your mind — the means of your life? Or your life — the end of your mind’s devising? Lie or die? Can any such choice be made? And if it can’t — what then?

What if you choose neither?

What then?

I got mugged, that’s what happened. Or almost mugged, anyway. On New Year’s Eve of all days, the very last day of the bloodiest century in human history.

I live on the edge of a world you barely know about, that place you read about in the newspaper, that fetid cavern that seems to house everything that is vicious and venomous and vile. I’m not interested in vice except as the object of derision, which is why I’m on the edge of that world. But I know the price of living where you do instead, and I choose not to pay it.

So I was out on New Year’s Eve. Not out partying, not out driving drunk, not out shooting off fireworks or shooting off my mouth. I was out because that’s where I am almost all of the time, out walking the empty streets.

Since before Thanksgiving I had been wandering within a mile or so of a big-city shopping mall. Not for any reason, but simply because I lacked the reason to go somewhere else. I see your story in what you do, in how you behave. If your story interests me I will stick around to watch you. Until I understand you. Or until I think I do. Or until I get bored.

This is a fact, and it might be news to you: Stray dogs don’t stray far. The population of vagrants who infest the neighborhood around a big-city shopping mall is pretty stable. Homeless people, winos, addicts, runaways — you think they come and go. But in fact mostly they come and stay. They might sleep in a different place every night, but once they get to know the merchants and the restaurants and the dumpsters, they’re not quick to move on to the unknown.

So it was no surprise to me that my would-be, wanna-be mugger was known to me. Not a friend, not even a nodding-acquaintance, but someone I’d seen again and again in the past weeks.

He was a tweaker, a methamphetamine addict. Just a kid, not even twenty, but he was dying. Even before he tried to mug me he was dying. He had an uncontrolled infection in his right leg, an immense pus-filled edema. Like all tweakers he was as thin as a ghost, but his right leg was swollen, from his ankle to his thigh, to the girth of a trash basket. He walked that way, as if his leg was embedded to the hip in a trash basket.

I had been watching him, catching sight of him when he was there to be seen, because I knew he was going to die. He needed to be in an ambulance. He needed to be in an emergency room. He needed to be in a hospital. Instead he was dragging his swollen leg from parking lot to parking lot, from dumpster to dumpster, from ecstatic high to crushing low, from the shivering cold to the endless shivering sweats. He was going to die, and I was going to let him. So were you.

But each of us is master of his own fate, and thus it was even for him. He mugged me, or tried to, at the shrine of St. Mary outside a Catholic church. And there did he die, his face lit in his last moments by the flicker of votive candles. Sic semper tyrannis. Thus always to tyrants.

I was lighting candles for my dead, sitting cross-legged on the concrete before the statue of Mary. There was no one around, of course, and the shrine was out of sight from the street. He came upon me from behind, and it wasn’t much of a sneak attack considering that he had to drag that trash basket of a leg behind him with every pace. He stopped right behind me, and it was only when I heard him pull back the hammer of a revolver that I began to be concerned.

Without turning, without taking my eyes away from my candles, I said, “Go ahead.”

“Wuh?”

“Go ahead. Kill me.”

“Hey, man, I don’t wanna kill you. I’m just rippin’ you off.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not what you’re doing. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t let you steal from me.”

“You won’t let me? How are you gonna stop me?”

I smiled, though only the Blessed Virgin could see my face. “Just like this.”

“Huh?”

“Just like this. I will not permit you to steal from me. I will not despoil myself in your behalf. I will not pretend that your will is mine, that your mind can cause my behavior. I will not cooperate with you.”

“Say what?”

“You pretend that your gun controls my behavior. That because you’re holding that gun, you can control my behavior. But you know this is false. That’s why you have the gun. If you could control my behavior, you wouldn’t need the gun. We both know the truth: Only I control my behavior. And I will not volunteer to affect to pretend to believe that the truth is untrue. I won’t lie for you, to buttress your insane illusions.”

“But — I can fucking kill you!”

“Sure you can. Go ahead.”

“Wuh?”

“Go ahead. Kill me. Be a killer. Be a murderer.”

“But… Don’t you want to live…?”

“Not like that, not ever.” I spun myself around so I could look up at him. He was filthy and feral, of course, his clothing more rags than fabric. The seam of his right trouser leg was ripped up to the waist, and the great swollen mass of that infected leg was right in my face. “Look at me,” I said. “What do you see?”

To this he answered nothing.

“Do I look like a straight to you?”

“Not hardly.”

“Do I look bent?”

“Not really. There’s something different about you.”

“That’s exactly right. I’m not straight and I’m not bent. There are only two choices, and I choose neither. So what am I, if I’m not straight and not bent? Am I a circle? A spiral? Maybe I’m a coil, bouncing from place to place. Refusing to lie, refusing to die. Refusing to kill, refusing to be killed. Refusing to enslave, refusing to be enslaved.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about choices. The choice is to lie or to die. To pretend that people with guns can control my behavior, or to let them kill me. The straights choose to lie. The bents choose to die. I choose neither.”

“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll do it if I have to!”

I shifted my weight onto my left hip. “This is your argument: Rather than die, I should prefer to live knowing that I have groveled before the likes of you. I won’t do it. I will not lie for you.”

That was one twist too many and I knew it. He would never have become a killer, not in a world of cooperative victims. But he was swinging the gun around to aim it at me, and I did not hesitate to punch him hard, right in his infected leg. It was so swollen that it burst with a splash of pus, and he collapsed, screaming. And as he collapsed he squeezed the trigger on his gun and it went off, tearing through his own intestines.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” he groaned.

“I told you. I choose neither. I won’t lie for you and I won’t die for you.”

“So now I’m going to die!”

I didn’t say, “And whose choice was that?” Instead I said, “If we can get you to the hospital, you should be okay.”

“No. Three weeks in the hospital. Three months in County. Then three years or more in prison…” He was sobbing, doubled over in pain.

I didn’t argue with him. I leaned my back against the edge of the shrine, then pulled him over to lean against me. I put my arms around him and said the Glory Be over and over again.

“Are you Catholic?”

“Sometimes. When it matters.” I switched to the Hail Mary, because it seemed twice appropriate. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

And there did he die, embraced by the man who had caused his death, vaguely lit by the candles in the shrine of Holy Mary. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and let light everlasting shine upon him. I kept saying the prayers even after I knew he was dead, only getting up when the New Year’s fireworks erupted into the sky.

I propped him up against the shrine, then went to call the police from a pay-phone. I told them where to find the body, then I walked away. And I just kept walking, my clothes smeared with pus and blood. What used to be a community is now more like a concentration camp, and reporting a crime is a good way to get sent to jail — especially if you look bent to a straight.

So I kept walking. I am among you, but I am not one of you; I will not yield to you. I was ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of myself. Will be until I die. I never wanted to cause a death, not even to avoid my own. But we live with the consequences of our choices. Thus always to all of us. Thus always even to me.

But my wanna-be killer died on the very last day of the bloodiest century in human history. By the time I had reported his death, it was a new year, a new century, a new millennium. And that, at the last, is what I’m writing about.

I’ve been doing this, walking this nation and writing about what I see, for more than twenty years now. In that time, I’ve evolved four rules for these stories, the Willie stories, and this one breaks three of them. First, a Willie story is almost always short, and this one isn’t. Second, a Willie story is almost never self-revealing, and this one is. Third, every Willie story has at least one joke, and this one has none.

But the fourth rule stands: Every Willie story is about you. You think they’re about the people I’m making fun of, but they’re not. They’re about you, about people who are basically honest and decent, but who come to be complicit in everything that is vicious and venomous and vile. Not from loving vice, but from failing to love virtue.

Your mind or your life, lie or die. That’s the demand at the bottom of your tax return. Lie or die. That’s the threat they issue to your son, compelled to register for military enslavement. Lie or die. That’s the threat they make to your employer with thousands of pages of regulations. Lie or die, all day, every day, everywhere you turn. Lie or die, again and again, for every day of your life.

And every day of your life, you choose the lie. You choose to cooperate and to pretend to surrender control of your life, to insist by your actions that some other mind can control your behavior, but your own cannot. You lie and you lie and you lie, and millions of innocents die. And you yourself persist only by refusing to acknowledge your groveling. Your mind — the means of your life, the awareness and memory and anticipation of your actions — becomes the enemy of your survival. To be aware that you have desecrated the glorious gift of human sovereignty is the path to self-slaughter, so you must slaughter self-awareness instead.

This is a mistake.

The worst, most loathsome, most vicious tyrant on the Earth is no different from my late, unlamented non-mugger. He is nothing without your cooperation. Without your active voluntary cooperation. Even I am apt to say “compelled this” and “coerced that”, but in actual fact, human behavior cannot be coerced. Only human bodies can be coerced, pushed around like mannequins. Human behavior can only be initiated by an act of will originating within the person acting. It cannot be caused or controlled from the outside. If you refuse to cooperate with the tyrant, he cannot cause your cooperation. He can push you around, even kill you, but he cannot cause you to initiate any purposive action.

You live in chains. In this awful century just passed, more than 150 million innocent people died in chains. And yet every person ever born was born free — unalterably, inviolably, immaculately free…

And the tyrants know it. That’s why they have guns. That’s why they want to take away your guns. Again and again they demand that you lie or die, and they never for a moment doubt that you might choose neither. And they bluster and brag that you never will, and they toss and turn in sleepless nights, because they know someday you shall. Sic semper tyrannosauris. Thus always to dinosaurs.

Choose neither. This is my wish for the Third Millennium. Choose neither, that we might finally become a fully human race, neither killing nor being killed, neither enslaving nor being enslaved, neither seeking to control others nor pretending to surrender to their control.

Choose neither. Because this is the only human choice.

Choose neither. And the dragons will be slain.

I wish you peace,

William Francis Xavier O’Connell
01/01/2001

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Continuing with my discussion of the bribe/gifts proffered to the contributors to Agent Blunderbuss, here’s a quick look at MyMarketWare.com.

I looked at this product when it was introduced and was not all that impressed. I like it better on second glance.

What is it? YASPWSS: Yet Another Single Property Web Site Solution. Like many of these services, the offering is pretty light-weight. And like seemingly all of them, it inflicts treacly music upon the end user. But, to be fair, the price for a site, hosted for a year, ain’t bad.

Keep in mind, as you read, that my frame of reference is our own engenu sites. I can do anything I want, to any level of detail or depth that I want, and I can reorganize an entire, huge web site on a whim. There is no YASPWSS on the market that is going to impress me.

MyMarketWare works to one level deep. That is, from a site’s “home” page, you go one level down, no deeper. Given that architecture, I would have loved to have seen at least the on-site links done within an iframe on the index page — pseudo AJAX.

You can link to off-site pages, which is a bonus, since it makes the sites effectively infinitely extensible.

The pages of the sites themselves are built in ASP, with a huge block of obfuscated code near the top of each one. Positioning on the pages is effected with both CSS and HTML tables, which seemed odd to me. MyMarketWare promises decent SEO from these pages, but they seemed very verbose, to my eyes.

I personally want a lot more photos than MyMarketWare makes available, and I want to be able to sort and organize them by category. The slide show software, apparently available on one page only, was fairly robust.

There are decent contact and scheduling forms, and MyMarketWare promises to feed your site’s details to various Realty.bots — which is probably also being done by other vendors you are using.

My overall rating of MyMarketWare’s demo single-property web site was “eh” but not inadequate. It does a decent job at what it does, but like every other YASPWSS out there, it doesn’t even begin to do enough of the job — nor even to approach all of the other jobs you should be able to do with automated web-site construction software.

A single-property web site can be the most important sales tool in a listing Realtor’s tool box, but it has to be deep enough, robust enough and compelling enough to do that job. Like many, many goofy “tools” sold to Realtors, a YASPWSS is just shining it on, making it look like you’re marketing the property when all you are really doing is wasting time and money.

But: To MyMarketWare’s credit, the price for this product is right. For you to buy your own domain for a year would cost you around ten bucks. Hosting for a year is going to run $36, at least. So after spending $46, you will have an empty domain that will take you a couple of days to populate. For $39 and a few hours of your time, you can have a single-property web site. It won’t be everything it could and should be, be we all gotta start somewhere.

I can’t find a review of MyMarketWare on Agent Shortbus, but they’re not advertisers. Sellsius weighed in, as did 4realz, but, in the very best light, these two posts simply illustrate that people who don’t actually sell real estate may not know a whole lot about what makes the frog jump, as Robert Heinlein used to say.

I end up here: The price is right, more than right, but the product is mostly wrong. I haven’t looked at other YASPWSS vendors lately, and it’s plausible to me that MyMarketWare is the best of the bunch. But it’s still not enough. To be an effective sales tool, a single-property web site has to be like that old Christmas “Wish Book.” The ultimate buyer of the home has to be able to go back to the site again and again, staying there until she’s “full” — until she’s satisfied. Anything less than that is a wasted effort, just another business card tacked up on the web.

I do consider this to be an honest effort, both in terms of product quality and market value, so I’m striving to be constructive. But we’ve been doing single-property websites for many years, long before the YASPWSS vendors came into existence. I think we know more about what makes single-property websites work — and what makes them fail — than anyone.

Cheryl Johnson and I have come to the agreement that engenu is like a John Deere harvester for people who think their job is to pick a peck of corn out of their gardens. But as I wrote the other day, Realtors have a publishing problem. They’re just now waking up to the fact that their “garden” is four miles square — and growing. We don’t need vendors to solve our publishing problem, we need to learn to get behind the harvester…

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology

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Can a man save his face, his ass, and his house at the same time? The moral and Big Board gods claim naught.  But still, rooting through the year end financial rubble atop my desk—the economic equivalent of the Gaza Strip, I consider the question (pondering Realtor that I am).

I tally my Christmas card total while I search the mail pile for fellow holiday survivors. I uncover just three scant acknowledgements this dim Season; one from my parents with a modest check enclosed (made out to my wife, of course); one from my daughter with a nice handwritten note; and one from our missing housekeeper. The latter is a nativity scene, written in Polish, and sent to our house via Air Mail.  I’m assuming it either says ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘I Quit!’ We haven’t seen her in weeks. Perhaps she moved back to her motherland where she can actually make ends meet scrubbing floors. I suppose she just resigned before we had to let her go anyway. (I mean really, who can’t keep their own house clean?)

I turn back to the task at hand and continue sifting through the pulp, avoiding paper cuts, and careful to sidestep 2nd Notices from lesser, non FICO reporting insurgents; my dentist, the Chicago Tribune Classified Section, the lawn service guy who never picked up my leaves this year. I hear a mutter beneath the wrack before electronically mine-sweeping my Schwab account to stave off the more formidable creditors for yet another 40 days and nights (with Grace Period); Bank of America Mortgage, BMW Financial Services, my genius accountant.

I look again at the three lone Seasons Greetings and reflect. I haven’t physically written, licked, stamped or sent out an actual Christmas card in years—not to family, not to friends, not to clients. I’m surprised I receive anything in the mail at all, to be honest. Between Twitter, Facebook, and Harry and David, all I seem to do anymore is Text and order online. Like an iPhone crackwhore, I find myself scrolling the cyber alleys for expired listings and below market abandominiums.  It has to be a cash deal and the john needs to close quickly, if you know what I’m saying.  It has to be instant. I take another digital hit…

I immediately get pinged back. Stocks are up 1.53%  on heavy morning trading.  I just made $1232. I text my broker to do his magic and make the paper gold liquid, once again.  I decide to pay my dentist and my lawn guy but stiff the Tribune. (The Cubs will need to suck a lot less than they did this past post-season for me to pony up in that corporate direction.) Besides, I have three loads of laundry to do, there’s dog and cat hair everywhere and Oprah is on in 10 minutes.  So have a Happy 2009, all. I’d send you a card but as you know, I don’t do that. Windows either, in case you were wondering.

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If you haven’t caught this message on the Real Estate Tomato, Jim Cronin and I will be hosting a social media webinar at 1PM (PST) - 2:30PM (PST), today:

Blogging ain’t enough if you want to put up big numbers on the scoreboard. I play this game to win so I’m all about scoring points.  Every day, I want to hit a grand slam, catch one in the end zone, score a hat trick, or hammer three-pointers.  I EXPECT to win, every single day, because of my social media strategy.

Five years ago, I started learning how to use social media to circumvent the pending “Do Not Call” legislation.  Since college, I always made my living on the telephone.  A typical day consisted of me rooting through my rolodex, with two-phones glued to each ear.   That damned “Do Not Call” list threatened my very existence

LinkedIn changed all that, in 2003.  I was invited to LinkedIn and found that I was the only mortgage guy in a roomful of well-earning tech folks, who owned homes.  Myspace came, in 2004.  I honed the rich demographic data to connect me with REALTORs by creating and promoting a group called MLS on Myspace.  Active Rain was a no brainer.  Facebook is the perfect combination to mix both consumer direct and professional referral platforms.

I’ll be walking, step-by-step, through the mechanics of :

1- setting up a profile on LinkedIn and Facebook

2- adding people you know to your sphere of influence on thos platforms

3- How to identify potential referral opportunities within your contacts’ contacts

4- How to engage the respective communities.

The webinar is free and has over 210 people registered.  There is room for 40 more.  If you can join us, register here.

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O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
        –Robert Burns, To a Louse

In a comment on AG’s bribe/gift extravaganza, I said:

And, yes, the Dwellicious campaign stunk to high heaven. It’s headed straight for the dead pool, once it actually launches. The same dumbass “idea” has already failed several times. To say anything else is absurd.

That remark turns out to be grossly unfair. Dwellicious is not all-on-its-own to the dead-pool destined, it is a mash-up and mash-note-like send-up of a vast host of future dead-pool denizens.

Here’s the pitch. People will shop at lots of different Realty.bots, see? So Dwellicious gives them an easy way to organize all the houses they are finding on these various sites. It has social-networking tools built in, since, apparently, social-networking-type homebuyers can’t even go to the bathroom without permission from their TwitterButtBuddies. Not only that, but Dwellicious taps into every available Realty.bot and social-networking API, which will possibly prove to be astounding if anyone ever accidentally uses this silly site.

I watched the Dwellicious PR campaign a few weeks ago, assuming that it had to be astroturf, but today is the first time I have paid even one second’s attention to the product itself.

It’s actually quite an instructive clusterfrolic, if there are web entrepreneurs out there who want to learn how to get just about everything wrong.

Here’s the straight dope: Dwellicious seems to have been developed by paying devout attention to the TwitWit echo chamber — without one second or one dollar being devoted to actual market research.

Premise: People will shop at lots of different Realty.bots.

This is almost certainly false. Homebuyers window-shop at sites like Trulia and Zillow. When they get serious, they move to a particular, robust and — important concepts ahead — complete and non-redundant IDX or VOW search engine.

(A subsidiary premise of the entire dead-pool-bound Realty.bot movement is the idea that some strange imaginary people might want to purchase a residence in more than one major city at the same time. It turns out that most people have only one head, and therefore need only one spot for their pillows.)

Conclusion: Dwellicious gives them an easy way to organize all the houses they are finding on these various sites.

But they’re not finding houses on various sites. People who are really searching for a residence they intend to purchase are searching on one or at most two sites, none of which have goofy Realty.bot APIs.

The rest of the Dwellicious “idea” is just beyond stupid, since it provides for a whole lot of options and activities for people who are not going to show up in the first place. Whatever reason an actual — non-imaginary — regular user of Zillow or Trulia has for returning to those sites, they have zero reasons to wander off to another site — to effect social bookmarking of the houses they’re not searching for in the first place.

In a comment at Sellsius, Tony Arko wonders why a homebuyer would share a prize find in public. It’s a good question, except it presumes that buyers will show up at Dwellicious in the first place. They won’t.

Dwellicious is all about serving a population of people who don’t exist, all while hooking-in every which way to Realty.bots and social media sites that are themselves on extremely shaky financial ground. It would be incorrect to say the site sucks, because I can’t see that it has any suction to begin with.

(A note to zombies from boring weblogs who show up at BloodhoundBlog attempting to link-bait traffic by teaching me how to write colorlessly: This essay draws upon an arcane literary discipline known as “style.” It’s worth looking into.)

So what’s with all the Dwellicious hoopla? I rack it up to political tendency, in this case putting beer and friendship before an honest evaluation of what is, in fact, an essentially useless product.

Witness:

Benn Rosales, Agent Shortbus: “It really puts into perspective what is most important in our industry and it doesn’t exclude the professional. [....] We hear rumors of a pay as you go Pro Plan that tosses out the idea of long term contracts- Genius like! Also, private party rumors are circling for Inman NYC, as well as some kick ass swag… we all love swag.”

Well, that’s pretty much a confession of pecuniary tendency.

More:

The WAV Group, whomever that might be: “Like a lime in a Corona, dwellicious is cool and refreshing.”

Wonder who paid for the Corona…?

There’s a lot more, but it’s all pretty embarrassing. I can’t but think that the coverage of Dwellicious, so far, has been almost nothing but tendency — bloggers telling fibs for beer or money. That’s pretty sad. People will say I’m mean for pointing out the true nature of this idiot site, but it’s not as if its idiocy could be kept secret from the marketplace. Once Dwellicious actually launches the secret that the louse is naked will be well and truly exposed.

In the mean time, my take is that developer Greg Robertson’s drinking buddies are just making themselves look like nitwits.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology

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So it’s almost five days since I dropped the dime on the bribe gifts being thrust upon the contributors to AG. Has anyone publicly renounced them so far? We got to see Jay Thompson issue some tepid caveats about the gift products — from our pages, not AG’s. And we got to watch in horror as Russell Shaw imploded, which wasn’t pretty. But if anyone has actually come out and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” — I’m not aware of it.

Doesn’t much matter, by now. The moment is gone.

You — meaning you, the invisible reader — will react as you choose, and that is not only your business, but it’s your perfect right. But I can give you a very simple lens for understanding the issue, one that not even the chorus line of tap-dancers who showed up in our comments could manage to gainsay:

Suppose you are finally about to be interviewed by the real estate reporter from your local “City” magazine. Very big deal, very exciting, maybe your chance to break through to the target market you’ve spent a fortune trying to attract. But then you discover that the reporter has taken $2,000 in in-kind gifts from your fiercest competitor. How does that make you feel? Is it possible that the reporter is on the up and up and the gifts mean nothing? Well… yeahhhh… Is is plausible to you that you are about to be served up like a plate half full of cold leftovers? That’s what’s running through your head, isn’t it? Taking expensive gifts from people you write about doesn’t mean you are necessarily corrupt, but it sure makes you look and smell corrupt.

In our comments threads, there were a lot of specious arguments made in defense of taking these bribes, or at least not renouncing them. One of them was the notion that “everyone is biased.” This is a very common fallacious dodge — which is to say a persuasively invalid argument. We start by acknowledging the obvious facts that each of us has a unique point of view, and each of us is operating from limited information. The fallacious dodge is to imply that these facts are equal to corruption.

Like this: Miss Misled is in deep earnest, is striving to be impartial but, alas, is factually in error in the position she has taken.

Mister Crooked is shamelessly and recklessly mouthing the specious propaganda has has been paid to spread to a gullible public.

Neither Miss Misled nor Mister Crooked is factually correct in their pronouncements. But those pronouncements are not morally equal — very far from it. Miss Misled has made a mistake, but Mister Crooked is deliberately lying to you.

(Every logical fallacy can be understood at this level of detail if you take the time to take them apart. Learning to reason according to the rules of sound rhetoric could be a worthy goal for 2009.)

In this particular instance the purpose of the rhetorical dodge is to fudge the difference between honest bias and dishonest tendency.

Tendency or tendentiousness is an attempt to deliberately mislead people into doing something they otherwise would not do. I can think of two flavors, political tendency and pecuniary tendency.

The latter is what salespeople are often accused of — not always without justice. It consists of fudging facts and tickling emotions to get people to do things that will be profitable to the proponent.

We’re more apt to excuse political tendency — to our peril. Politicians lie to us in order to get more power or to pay off their supporters — themselves most often advocates of pecuniary tendency.

The funniest stooges in this charade are the taxpayers, of course, who get whipped this way and that, getting their pockets picked all the while.

The saddest clowns, to me, are the newspaper and TV reporters, who deploy the tools of political tendency for no gain of their own, but simply because they are puerile believers in the beauty and justice of whipping innocent taxpayers and picking their pockets.

We’re watching all of this happen right now, in Phoenix, as we become the latest city to be encysted with that risible product of political tendency known as “light rail.”

If you understand railroading, you will know that, whatever “light rail” might be, what you are looking at in the picture shown above is a trolley car. Absolutely everything about this boondoggle is a lie, starting with its name.

There are many, many more lies behind this trolley:

• Like all municipal transit systems, it cannot possibly ever make a profit
• According to its builders’ own projections, only one car in 1,000 will be taken off the roads by the trolley
• That same report admits that the trolley will make both traffic and air pollution worse, not better
• There is no profitable route for a trolley in Phoenix, but the route that would lose the least money — north and south on Central Avenue from Dunlap to Baseline Roads — was not used; this is the route with the greatest concentrations of bus passengers right now
• The second-least-unprofitable route — north and south on Central Avenue from Dunlap to Buckeye Roads, east and west from there along Buckeye Road/University Drive through the airport, through ASU, and then perhaps north and south on Alma School Road to the commercial heart of Mesa — was also not used
• Instead, bowing to the political tendency of wealthy homeowners in Phoenix, to the political tendency of ASU in Tempe and to the pecuniary tendency of the aging burghers of Mesa, the trolley meanders along a route that is often stupid and useless — unless you understand political and pecuniary tendency
• The failure to connect through the airport, in particular, will cost the taxpayers another $2 billion to build yet another trolley system to connect with this one — even though the stupid route chosen parallels the freeway that runs through the airport from less than one mile away!
• ASU is building a completely redundant medical school in gritty downtown Phoenix in a give-back of political tendency; by forcing undergrads to take at least one round-trip a day for their core classes in Tempe, ASU is artificially boosting the passenger count on the trolley with young, shiny, happy, healthy and prosperous-looking students — each one traveling on a taxpayer-subsidized transit pass
• Taking account of the truly insane route the trolley takes through the campus of ASU, my speculation is that the give-back for the bogus medical school will a rebuilt Sun Devil Stadium — even though the taxpayers just built a brand new football stadium in Glendale
• Though much has been made of the new commercial real estate development along the route of the trolley, little notice has been taken of the hundreds of once-profitable small businesses that were wiped out, either by eminent domain or by trolley construction
• Similarly, hundreds of homeowners were dispossessed by the trolley; going north on 19th Avenue, dozens of homes have been taken even though the trolley may never run that far north
• As you might guess, much of that new commercial real estate development along the route of the trolley is being subsidized by the taxpayers
• In addition, the municipalities along the trolley route have imposed a Transit-Oriented Development zoning overlay to encourage certain kinds of business and to discourage others; in particular, if your business is friendly to drivers, you’re screwed
• As with the bogus ASU medical school, the purpose of the Transit-Oriented Development zoning overlay is to stack the deck in the trolley’s favor: If municipalities can make driving difficult or painful, they hope to compel people to use the trolley
• Even so, in the long run the trolley will result in fewer mass-transit passengers, not more: The massive unprofitability of the trolley will require cuts in much more popular (though still unprofitable) bus lines; this has already started happening
• Even though the trolley is a favorite pet of the political tendencies of Yuppies, particularly, it will turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for the poor — who don’t have any delusions about the “glamor” of mass-transit but have to take it anyway; this is well-established fact in other cities that have built trolley systems
• Even so, in a city where the afternoon high temperature is very often way over 100 degrees — in blistering sunlight, sometimes with fairly high humidity — Yuppies who have to walk some distance, either to their station or from it, will not take the trolley to work; their very expensive clothing would be ruined
• And even though the trolley runs for much of its route behind a curb, and even though the traffic lights have been rejiggered to the trolley’s advantage, nevertheless it will be the source of a huge number of automobile accidents, many of them fatal; this again is well-established fact demonstrated in other trolley-afflicted cities
• If news reports in other trolley-trend cities are any guide, these accidents will either go unreported or will be minimized
• And even though every bit of this is true, none of it will be reported in the mainstream media outlets — not now and probably not ever

This is the curse of tendency. Media outlets in Phoenix have been yammering about this silly trolley system for ten solid years, but almost none of these ugly facts have been reported in the popular media.

And please understand, I like public transportation. I’ve lived in New York and Boston, where mass-transit is actually useful — not profitable, but useful. I used to read all twelve of Ibsen’s “social” plays, in order, every summer, on the MBTA commuter rail on the way into Boston. If it weren’t for the rape of the taxpayers, I’d have nothing but praise for mass-transportation.

And here’s the real kick in the head: Mass-transit might actually be profitable if government would get itself out of the real estate and transportation businesses. We build stupidly because the taxpayers never tire of being raped. The earth is 70% water, and yet, somehow, municipally-managed water-supplies are always in “crisis.” In Phoenix the tap-water tastes like chlorine bleach and dead fish. In preference to getting out of a business they’re obviously incompetent to manage, the city produces agitprop public-service-announcements telling people to serve up tap-water — rife with who knows what kind of poisons and bacteria — with ice and lemons to kill the awful taste and smell. One would think that the more thoughtful kind of taxpayer could catch a clue about government management of what should be commercial enterprises.

But instead, the people want to play with their Toonerville Trolley, no matter what the cost, no matter what the opportunity costs, no matter who gets hurt. That’s really sad, but our own hands are not clean, either. As bad as the trolley might be for everyone, considered as a group, it can be very good for particular individuals — Ibsen readers, perhaps. So here we are pimping the damn thing ourselves. I’m doing a contract later today with a buyer whom I have no doubt will be taking the trolley to and from her job downtown.

But: The point of all this is this: You are being lied to, all the time, by the very people you trust to tell you the truth. There has not been any honest reporting about this trolley system in Phoenix, nor about the water supply, nor about any other pet project of politically tendentious reporters. For seventy years and more we made fun of Soviet-style propaganda — half hysterical hectoring, half saccharine boosterism. Welcome to Soviet America. If any topic of civic life is subject to the political tendencies of reporters, you will not discover the truth by pursuing the popular media.

And it goes for us, too. If we are not doing everything we can to make sure that political or pecuniary tendency is not creeping into our writing, then it probably is. And if we are not doing everything we can to eradicate doubts about our tendencies in the minds of our readers, there is no reason not to expect those doubts to take root.

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2008 rocked! Yeah, the economy tanked, but I do believe that crisis means opportunity so I’m not sweating that right now- I’m looking for ways to make the best of this situation.

Professionally, this year has been productive. That shouldn’t be misunderstood to mean that I’m swimming in transactions, because I’m not. But I’m not in debt and I’ve grown professionally through some experiences. Due to my own failure to communicate, I experienced a painful wake-up call from some clients while I was at BHBU in Orlando. What can you do when you are 1000 miles away? If you are me, you stop what you are doing and communicate. And communicate. And communicate. And you do what you need to do to make things right- and I have. And then you take a drive to Coco Beach with your husband and have one of the most wonderful dinners of your life. I’m grateful for clients that let me know their thoughts and let me work to fix things. So now I’m stronger, smarter, and more prepared than I’ve ever been- that’s progress, that’s productive.

For many reasons, mostly of my own creation, I have never been focused on my business the way I need to be. This fall a family situation changed and suddenly I had the opportunity to see things a bit more clearly. Uninterupted time is now mine. Goals? Time management? Focus? It’s mine all mine! And now I can take the tools, tips, and techniques I’ve been surrounding myself with and slowing honing and really get to work. This is good. This is very good. 2008 rocked but 2009 should be slamming and if it’s not, I’m hanging up my license.

This was a dog’s year for being online. It was amazing to meet so many people on twitter, at conferences throughout the year, and through emails. And to all the people who have vented publicly and privately about BloodhoundBlog, thank you. I’m a better and stronger person because of you, I hope each of you can say the same.

Greg Swann, this week, and this post, this post, and this post, and all the comments and discussion that they have inspired, or perhaps compelled is a better word, have been cathartic. Through this entire year, and last week in particular, BloodhoundBlog has forced me to grow in dog years, professionally and also in human spirit- I can’t imagine that a better gift could be given from one friend to another. Thank you.

I love stories of transformation and growth. I love freedom. I root for the underdog, but I find that freedom, transformation, and standing strong are not always about chest-beating drama. For me, and maybe for you as well, it’s just as likely to be an introspective, often solitary, sometimes lonely, but still remarkably beautiful, journey. I can’t think of a better way to end any year than with dancing and this is a Bob Fosse’s choreography to the theme song from Cool Hand Luke.

Wishing everyone who has touched my life this year, a healthy, prosperous, and Happy New Year!

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As 2008 comes to a close it’s important to remember… well, it’s important to remember what’s important.  Ben Stein does a pretty good job of that in this article.  He is ostensibly talking about the fallout from Bernard Madofff’s Ponzi scheme, but he says a whole lot more:

We are more than our investments.  We are more than the year-to-year or day-by-day changes in our net worth.  We are what we do for charity.  We are how we treat our family and friends.  We are how we treat our dogs and cats.  We are what we do for our community and our nation.  If you had $100 million or $100,000 a year ago and now you have a lot less, you’re still the same person.  You’re not a balance sheet, at least not one denominated in money…

It’s a tough thing to remember in a business measured by commissions.  Our lives are surrounded by miracles and drowned out by laughter.  Having money may improve our lifestyle, but it does not improve us.  Losing money may cause us hardship, but it does not lessen us.  Our happiness is a function of how happy we see ourselves at our core.  It is a choice of awareness.  Ben Stein gets that.  Choose to be happy - it’s more fun.

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Kicking this back to the top. I wrote this 21 months ago, but it’s one of the most important posts I’ve written here. –GSS

 
I had this as a comment late last night:

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

The author is Keith Brand from Housing Panic, writing under one of the half-dozen or so sock-puppet email addresses he uses. Don’t go looking for the comment. I have him blocked completely.

The comment was in response to my post last night, Stopping traffic to sell houses.

The remarks themselves are stupefyingly stupid, of course. Obviously I am arrogant and cocky — I think for good reason, but good reason or bad, I will be the first to lay the charges. “Insufferable bastard” fits me to a tee. “Incompetence” is simply comical in this context. I invented the idea of the custom real estate sign, was grasping for it through two generations of our signs before it was physically possible.

Oh, well. Who besides Keith Brand does not know that Keith Brand is an idiot? It’s very funny that he has chosen me as his poster child for a dumb Realtor, given who I am, given what we’ve done here. You could argue that this is the perfect testament to his stupidity, but there is more to be unearthed in the graveyard that is Keith Brand’s rotting soul.

Consider: Do I know I’m cocky? Do I know I’m arrogant? Do I know I am supremely competent — as a Realtor, as a real estate weblogger, as a real estate marketing innovator? I not only know that all of these things are true, they are among the very many proud facts of my life. So what could Keith Brand hope to achieve by saying,

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

Is this supposed to move me to despair? Me?

But: A different remark in a different context with a different person might have that effect. I am impervious to criticism. It’s either true or it isn’t. If it’s true, I am enriched for having learned better. If not, so what? But other people are different, and they can be hurt — and not just temporarily — by even false charges.

Suppose I were that kind of person. What would Keith Brand have gained for having insulted me? What’s in it for him? Because I am who I am, I am strengthened and improved for having understood him, but the increment is so minor it’s essentially nothing. But had he managed to subtract from my very high self-regard, how would having done so have done anything to improve his own life? If anything, the kind of behavior he exhibits can only make his life worse — and not in minor increments.

People like Keith Brand hate their own lives so much that they lash out at everything. His sole goal, motive and intention is to spread his own internal misery to as many victims as he can latch onto, thus to justify by pandemic wreckage the wreckage he has made of the incomparable gift of human life.

But here’s the fun part about the war the Keith Brands of the world would inflict upon the rest of us: It can’t happen if you won’t go along with it.

Ayn Rand wrote about an idea she called “The Sanction of the Victim,” an undeserved internalized guilt that could be used as underhanded moral leverage on otherwise happy, productive people. In another context, I wrote about the tragic contradictions that arise because the children of Cain are unwilling to denounce the evils of Abel:

If you live in Cain’s world, stop pretending to live in Abel’s.

If your life depends on capitalism, private property and free trade, stop pretending to admire collectivism. If you thrive by continuous innovation, stop enshrining tradition. If you govern your behavior by reason and conciliation, stop praising vengeance and retribution. If you want to live free from coercion by other people, stop pushing other people around by force.

Keith Brand and his ilk do not matter. The only sane solution to dealing with that kind of person is not to deal with them. Refer them out or just ignore them until they go away. You will not “reform” them or teach them that yours is the better way. The only way you can delight them is to join them, to become one more virtual vampire shedding misery from the graveyard of your own soul.

This is not a commendable business strategy.

Contradictions do not exist. They only seem to because someone, somewhere is promulgating a falsehood, and no one is actively shooting it down.

Would you like to completely destroy The Sanction of the Victim? All you have to do is acknowledge it in the open: “My wealth is not the cause of your poverty. My health is not the cause of your illness. My happiness is not the cause of your misery. My life is my own, and you have no prior claim upon it.”

Do you want to chase Abel from the temple and then raze the temple to the ground? Acknowledge in no uncertain terms that everything you have comes from living in Cain’s way, and none of it from Abel’s.

Do you want to know who makes pandemic, persistent evil possible? It’s you, by failing to stand up for justice — explicitly, audibly, undeniably — when you are falsely accused.

Here’s another one, and it is everywhere: The Implied Accusation. It is communicated — if at all — by glares and sighs and harrumphs and scowls. Everyone knows what is going unsaid and nobody says anything. The Implied Accusation works beautifully, because, if you want the accusation made explicitly, you’ll have to explicate it yourself. Except you don’t explicate it yourself because you know that, even though you are without guilt here, you have too much to answer for elsewhere.

The Implied Accusation is the underground river flowing through every unhappy relationship. To address good and evil, all you have to do is bring things out into the open. But after a while, there is simply too much to go through, too much that is too shameful to be cheerfully borne and revisited. Nothing lives underground, but nothing ever really dies, either, its just rots, becoming its own graveyard. In the end, it becomes easier to destroy the relationship than to go to all the work necessary to repair it.

Here is The Implied Accusation in real estate: “Realtors are stupid.” “Realtors are corrupt.” “Realtors are lazy.” “Realtors are self-serving.” “Realtors will say anything to make a deal.” These ideas are epidemic, a cultural undercurrent.

You know these charges are untrue, but what do you do about them? To leave The Implied Accusation unnamed, unaddressed is to seem to confess to it, or at least to plead no contest. Your clients begin their relationship with you with unstated doubts about your integrity, and you hope to counter those attitudes by your behavior.

This is not enough. You have to make the issue explicit. You have to make every bit of it explicit, and not just once. At any point in your relationship with a client — possibly years after a transaction has closed — you may have to address The Implied Accusation. When, specifically? When there arises the possibility of a colorable doubt about your motives. The trouble is not that your client might complain, but, rather, that he might not complain and yet walk away from your relationship feeling aggrieved.

“Mrs. Johnson, I need for you to understand how I work. Realtors have a pretty bad reputation right now, and, while I think this is largely undeserved, I don’t ever want to do anything to add to that bad impression. So I want to spell out exactly how we’re going to proceed, for this and any other real estate transactions we undertake.

“The most important point I want to convey to you is that I intend to work for you as if you were a member of my own family. If my mother were buying a home, if my sister were selling, if my son were getting his first condo, not one of them could expect better service from me than I plan to give to you.

“Why do I work that way? I believe in doing the right thing, no matter what, and that’s my overriding reason. But the fact is, if I treat you the way you want to be treated, you’ll bring all your future business to me, and you’ll refer all your friends and family to me. Furthermore, I incur a legal liability when I represent you in a real estate transaction. I’ve never been sued, and, god help me, I never will be. But my best protection against getting sued is to do right by you in the first place.

“So that’s something you can do for me, as we work together. I’m going to be doing everything I can to make sure you are delighted, but if for any reason you are not delighted, I need for you to tell me right away. I will do everything I can to put things right, right away.

“I really don’t think that will be an issue, but another thing you can do for me is to tell me if there is something you want me to do that I haven’t done, some piece of information you want that I haven’t gotten for you, something that I’ve promised that I haven’t followed up on. I need you to tell me about these things right away. Don’t let them fester. If you have a question, ask it. If you have a need, express it. If you have a problem or an issue or a worry or a doubt, throw it out on the table and let’s hash it out.

“I make my living effecting real estate transactions, and I don’t get paid until every step of the process is completed. But my legal and moral obligation to my clients eclipses every other interest in my life, including my own self-interest. I want for you to be happy at the end of this process — no matter how it ends. I want for you to be delighted with the work I’ve done for you, even if we end up not buying or selling a house. You are my client now, and I want you to be my client forever. I want to do everything that is right for you, first and always. And I want for you to bring me all your business — you and everyone you know. And I want for you never to feel the need to sue me. The moral is the practical, always, no matter what business we do — or don’t do — right now.

“Why am I saying all this to you? For two reasons: To make it explicit, and so you can feel comfortable holding me accountable to it. These are the terms on which I do business with everyone, and this little speech is your warranty that I will do business with you this way, as well.”

That’s about 600 words, maybe four minutes if you intoned it verbatim — and don’t intone it verbatim. But in four minutes you will have put your relationship on a professional footing. You can’t do much about the pandemic misperception of Realtors, but you can take away the fears of the people you work with face-to-face.

Is there any reason why you wouldn’t want to do this? Sure. If you didn’t want to follow through on those promises. For the most part, most of us are not guilty of the charges implied by The Implied Accusation. But we are not without real guilt, and it is that real guilt that explodes into the cacophony of guilty silence when The Implied Accusation resounds silently in the room. Everybody knows what is going unsaid, and nobody says a thing.

To challenge evil, you have to dare to say its true name. In most cases, merely making the issue explicit will make it go away. If you get very lucky, making the issue explicit will flush out a Keith Brand, whom you can then shun in self-preservation. But, at a minimum, committing to words — to audible, undeniable sound — the commitment you propose to make to your clients will induce you to follow through, where it might be easier to defer, to default, to deny there was any such commitment in the first place.

I’m talking about real estate, because that’s what I do here, but this issue is really as big as all of human life: We tend to refrain from making our commitments explicit because we want to cling to a secret trap-door escape route. If you want better relationships in any part of your life, committing yourself as I demonstrated above is a very good place to begin. Obviously, nothing will stop you from betraying your commitment — but you will have to betray yourself first.

“Every action that you take in your life is first taken by your ego upon your ego.” If you commit yourself to absolute excellence as a Realtor, and if you follow-through on that commitment to the absolute best of your ability, you will be impervious to the likes of Keith Brand. When you are guiltless in your own mind, when you know by your own rational conviction that your performance is excellent beyond all doubt, there will be nothing that a graveyard-trolling wretch can do to make war on your attitude.

If you make your moral code explicit — in real estate or in your life as a whole — and then live up to that moral code, you will be unassailable. The moral is the practical. We do well by doing good. And virtue — properly understood and properly effected — is all the reward you could ever want…

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing

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The Goal-Getters Game is a variation on some of the ideas we have been playing with in email since Thanksgiving.

So first: ‘Tis the season for New Year’s Resolutions, made in haste and forgotten more hastily.

The Motivational Speaker Circuit, both inside and outside of the real estate world, is always all over the idea of goal-setting. But real changes in you life can only come from goal-achieving.

In our email discussions, I brought up Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” system of goal tracking.

Years ago when Seinfeld was a new television show, Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comic. At the time, I was hanging around clubs doing open mic nights and trying to learn the ropes. One night I was in the club where Seinfeld was working, and before he went on stage, I saw my chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me was something that would benefit me a lifetime…

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Teri has mentioned that she is already deploying this technique in her real estate practice. It doesn’t matter what your goal is. If you track it by the “don’t break the chain” system, you’ll achieve results.

There’s more. Jeff Brown mentioned the idea that, if you do something for 21 consecutive days, you will have made a habit of it. I don’t know if 21 days is the magic number, but it is a certainty that good habits, once formed, are a powerful goad to good performance.

Here’s the game that Cathleen and I came up with tonight, The Goal-Getters Game.

1. Select one or at most two meaningful goals that you want to achieve — consistently — in the coming year. Cathy picked prospecting for at least one hour each day and exercising for at least one hour each day. I chose setting at least one listing or showing appointment each day and exercising for at least one hour each day.

2. Set up some means of tracking your results Seinfeld style. I built a calendar you can use, or you can try an on-line tool like Don’t Break the Chain! (We may end up building a better social media tool for The Goal-Getters Game.) Either way, track each goal separately. On the calendar, you could make a big “X” using a different colored marker for each goal.

3. Get after your goals. As with the Seinfeld system, your objective is to achieve your goals every single day, without breaking the chain.

4. Want to add another goal? A laudable objective. But: Here’s what you must do: Before you can add another goal to The Goal-Getters Game, you must achieve each one of your current goals for 21 days in a row. If you miss a day on any one goal, the count starts over. Only when you have achieved each one of your current goals for an unbroken chain of 21 days in a row can you add another goal.

If anyone gets to five serious goals that you are achieving every single day, send me your picture. I want to tape it to my bathroom mirror for inspiration.

Any ideas for making this game more fun, more motivating or more likely to succeed?

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing

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As I’ve said in the past, I’m not a fan of the term “Web 2.0.”  I’ll take it a step further and say that there are many aspects of the “Web 2.0″ movement that I dislike.  There are enough aspects of the movement that I find silly that I can, and will, fill a post (but not now.)

Contrary to popular belief, I am a fierce capitalist.  Granted, I do love the open source movement, but I also think that there are ways to monetize open source, working within our capitalist system.  Much of “Web 2.0″ seems to be anti-capitalist.  Users want everything free (no registration, no paid memberships, etc…) and in many cases don’t want site owners/bloggers to earn directly from their endeavors.  It should be a labor of love, right?  Any money earned should be earned indirectly, the 2.0′ers say.

Chris Johnson hit some great points in his recent post, and I agree with 95% of what he says.  However, I don’t reach the same conclusion.

In the past, paid blog reviews were fantastic for SEO, but with Google’s call to turn in paid links, and with the proliferation of the nofollow tag, this isn’t the case any longer (for white hats.)  However, Paid Reviews are still fantastic ideas for many vendors.  Why?  Highly targetted traffic.  Traffic that can, and will convert.  When was the last time you clicked on an ad when reading a blog?  However, would you follow a link to a vendor, if a blogger you respect wrote a thoughtful review, and the product pertained to you or your business?  Many people do…even when they know the review was purchased.

I disagree with Chris’ conclusion that all Paid Reviews are bad for blogging.  However, I do agree that paid reviews can, will, and should evolve.  He’s correct that Ratespeed could possibly have become better, had an intelligent conversation occurred, and all aspects been discussed.  How much more valuable is honest criticism over blanket praise?  If the community you’re targetting recommends you change, and you make those changes, how would that community respond?  There’s real value in that discussion - value that many vendors would pay for.  If a blog owner has developed a wide, valuable readership, I see nothing wrong with the owner earning for that hard work.

Contrary to Chris, I don’t believe that paid reviews are the “stamp of a moron,” or that they make you a whore.  I read many, many, many, blogs that have done paid reviews.  This tells me nothing except, “these bloggers like money.”

One aspect of “Web 2.0″ that I do love is transparency.  “Web 2.0″ paid reviews should be (and often are) transparent.  Just as you should nofollow and tag all advertising on your site, paid reviews must be disclosed, and the links must be nofollowed.  Genuine discussion should be allowed, and your advertiser should welcome it.  Otherwise, you can, and will look like a…

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