Tagged: twitter

July 13, 2012

Azealia Banks: Fantasea

I’ve been exhausted all week so I was out of ideas by Thursday night, where I’m writing this from, if you can’t tell. Pro tip: if you haven’t been sleeping a lot, avoid celebrating the one night you get to bed on time with an hour and a half of sex.

As always, I turned to my friends at Twitter to solve the mess I made of myself.

@Marinaisgo: I’m too tired for this shit. The first person to tell me what tomorrow’s blog should be about wins

@aldoxcab: @Marinaisgo Azealia Banks’ new mixtape.

@Marinaisgo: @aldoxcab you win! Now what the fuck is that?

Then I watched this:

And I was like, ‘I don’t even care if her synch is off, this bitch is fun.’

So I downloaded her mixtape, Fantasea, and listened to it while I washed the dishes. Halfway through the first song, Ben told me that it was disconcerting listening to me breathing heavy as I booty danced in an otherwise silent kitchen. So I went and got my ipod speakers and everybody felt included.

I usually avoid mixtapes because my experience with them is that they’re too rough for my tastes. I like a finished track. Fantasea isn’t polished, but I see some real potential here. I wish that there was more singing like in 212, but this is quality. It seems like we spent quite a few years focusing on beats and disregarding rhyme and flow in popular hip hop. Not that Kanye isn’t great, but I think it’s time for the lyricists to make a come back, and I think that’s a little bit of what I’m hearing when I listen to Azealia Banks.

I can see why she was so popular in England. She has what I’ve come to recognize as a more European style, which is light on original beats and heavy on exposition. To be honest, if British rappers had more exciting lives, I’d probably be a bigger fan of their hip hop than I am. Fortunately, Azealia either has interesting shit to say, or she talks too damn fast for me to tell the difference. She seems to be fighting with someone in every song, and I’m OK with that.

My favorite track by far is ‘Fierce,’ featuring a monologue from an ex drag ball queen I have not been able to identify.

“I used to think I was fierce
’cause I was in all the houses
I won trophies
I used to much trade for dollars too
But see I’m fiercer now
’cause I got a job, I got an education
and I got somebody waiting at home for me God damn it “

If anybody knows where this is from, please tell me. Some cobwebby part of my brain wants to say it’s from Paris is Burning, but there’s no way I would have forgotten that, right?

Anyway, I really like her style, I like her sentiment. I feel we’re being introduced to a generation of females in hip hop who aren’t expecting to be treated any differently than their male counterparts. In another favorite track of mine, Runnin’, she says it quite succinctly: “y’all tryina to sleep with these ni**as/ I’m tryina eat with these ni**as/ I read these ni**as the script/ and get sick of seeing these ni**as.” Not only does she expect to do business on equal footing with her male counterparts, she expects to surpass them by a wide margin. I like this chick and I like her songs.

Comment on my bog if:

You know who the fuck that drag ball queen is.
You have something to say about the state of hip hop (which I am very optimistic about, by the way.)
You want to correct me on any of the bullshit I just spewed. Because I have to confess, I’ve never been a fan of popular hip hop when it was actually popular. I try to listen to the radio and it’s just teenagers rapping about their paint jobs and I die inside a little bit. So my education in this regard is far from complete or even accurate.
You have artists to recommend to me. Beats aren’t super important, but I already have all the Immortal Technique albums, so I can do without more terrible casio loops under an otherwise intelligent and well written rhyme.
You just wanna talk to me. Because I wanna talk to you. and you, and you and you.

Oh, and download her mixtape for free here, if you’re interested. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to be free.

Fuuuck. I’m going to bed now.

June 21, 2012

The Creation of the Toctopus a.k.a You’re Welcome

So this morning, I asked my twitter friends to tweet me words and I would draw them. Since I can’t always think of a new blog post every day, I’m lazily pasting better quality scans of the exact same drawings I just tweeted.

I know, I’m an inspiration.

Kawaii for @mechtroid

Batman for @TheInfamousBiGD

You may be asking yourself why his torso is so exceedingly long. This is the earth 12 batman, where everybody’s the same, but their torsos are really long.

Schwarma for @aldoxcab

Toctopus for @ApparentlyMary

Then I ran out of words, and also my hand got tired. So I stopped drawing.

May 31, 2012

Blogging Monday through Friday Means Never Having to Produce Your Best Work

Have you ever noticed how much this guy:

looks like this guy?

I guess that’s why they made him the Hulk. And an excellent hulk indeed.

Anyway, I know this is going up on Wednesday (or Thursday, depending) but last week was brutal. On Wednesday May 23, I went to the largest, most consistently under construction hospital in North America (citation needed), Huntington Memorial in Pasadena to support my grandma as my mother went in for surgery. The intention was to excise a lobe of her lung, test the cancerous cells and know by the time she woke up if the cancer was lung or breast.

Why can’t doctors all get together and agree to stop saying they can do things when they totally can’t do them and people are counting on a certain timeline of events and it’s frustrating and disappointing when it doesn’t turn out that way? Not least of which because you have to call the entire family and several friends and honorary relatives and tell them that all that shit you said before the surgery is actually not what happened at all and instead this other thing is happening, or at least supposed to happen and that doesn’t even happen either. More on that shortly.

While we were waiting for the news, Grandma and I hung out in the hospital cafeteria, where I showed her the wholesome goodness of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

She wasn’t impressed. Some of her better commentary:

On Twilight Sparkle: “That doesn’t look like a horse to me.”
On Fluttershy: “That one’s eyelashes are sticking out real far.”
Grandma: “Why is she in this town?” Me: “To make friends” Grandma: “Huh.”
Me: “Do you want to watch more ponies?” Grandma: “No.” Me: “But the Internet loved your commentary!” Grandma: “The what?”
Yes I live-tweeted my grandma watching MLP:FiM. I did it for the RTs and I’m not sorry.

Trying to keep the RT train going, I then had the Internet ask my grandma random questions, which she answered in her endearingly grumpy way.

Me: gay marriage? Grandma: people should be able to marry whoever they want. You should be able to marry your mother if you want.
Me: Grandma, pie vs cake? Grandma: what?
Me: what is your favorite type of sword? Grandma: I don’t have a favorite sword. That’s like asking what’s your favorite sneeze.
Me: Do you want the Internet to ask you more questions? Grandma: No, they ask dumb questions.

So, after annoying my poor grandma and soundly beating her at Gin Rummy, the doctor was ready to tell us the news. Apparently they couldn’t test the cells while my mother is in surgery (they just told us they could for the luls) so instead of taking the lobe, they just took the cancerous bit and left the lobe in there for possible later retrieval. They sent the cells off for testing, and the doc told us the results should be back by Friday. Seven (or eight, depending) days later we still don’t know what’s wrong with her.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Huntington Memorial. If I ever get injured, airlift me to that motherfucker, I don’t care if I’m in Kansas. All doctors do this. Why don’t they just say results will come in a week and be done with it? That way if results do come in sooner, people are happy to know sooner instead of being constantly disappointed while the dates they should have known things on sail by waving.

Whatever, the important thing about this whole ordeal is that I managed to avoid my mom the entire time. I was at the hospital from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. and I didn’t lay eyes on her once. I was a good (if obnoxious) grandchild, I waited with my grandma through the surgery and kept her entertained. I talked to my uncle and my grandma’s bestie Lomie. After surgery, I dropped grandma off at the entrance to the recovery ward with my mom’s friend and left them to find my mother together, and when they called me I came back up and got her.

After the hospital, we went and ate at Shakers, so named because everybody there has a palsy. The median age for this place was about 65, and that’s only because there was a table of 16 year olds in the corner talking about BJs. After a long day of tweeting and card playing and relative wrangling, I was starved and exhausted, which is probably how I was able to choke down their food. The burger tasted faintly of uck. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on what was obviously a family owned operation. I’ll say this for Shakers: it was open. Also their zucchini bread was awesome.

Not to bury the headline, but the update here is that there really is nothing to update. Mom still definitely has cancer, but weather it’s lung or breast is anyone’s guess. Well, not anyone’s. The doctor said he was 70% sure it is stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, which is why he didn’t take the whole lobe, as there would be no point if he was right. Then again, he also said we’d have results by Friday, and before that he said he could test what type of cancer it was while she was in surgery. So who fucking knows.

May 29, 2012

Social Media Training

Since I left college, I’ve been working for other people helping them with their “Web 2.0″ compatibility. I have to say, I’m pretty good at it. People from partner organizations have contacted my boss to ask if I could share my social media strategy with them, and I happily obliged. After 5 years of being paid to build communities online, I really want to share what I’ve learned with more than just my employer and our partners.

To be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what the endgame is for putting my tips online for free, except that I’d like to be known for my social media expertise outside the little niche of my industry. So, I’m dipping my toe into the pool of extracurricular activity by starting to offer social media training. The first one was last Saturday.

What follows is the transcript of my livetweet of that training. I think it was a big success and I’m excited to share my first foray into being a private social media professional.

Social media is like a big party where you want to be the most popular guest.

Popular guests don’t run into a party and yell HEY EVERYBODY START TALKING ABOUT ME! Neither are they wallflowers.

Suwalee: You mean I have to say things to make me interesting, so they talk about me?

Me: Yes.

Suwalee: Do people need to know about marketing to do this?

Me: Marketing is detrimental to the social media cause.

Traditional marketing people usually fail on social media because they’re too used to having a silent audience. They don’t know how to be a participant.

You don’t have to know about marketing, but you do have to know about your product, and the people who use your product.

Suwalee: That’s just really good marketing.

Me: Ok, but, anyone can do it if they’re genuine and they believe in their product.

You have to become familiar with twitter. It’s just like the party analogy. If you’ve never been to a party, it’s a little weird at first.

Just like at a party, you don’t want to be boring, so you find followers who share your interests.

If you want people to find you interesting, tell good stories.

Every party guest knows that the person with the best stories is usually the one people gather around.

Tell the story of your product, your workers, your customers.

Before you get on social media you need to know what your product is, and you need to have at least some idea of it’s story.

Usually, the people are the product when it comes to social media. So if you want to be a good social media product, be a good social media person.

Provide your followers with useful information about your product, yourself and your industry.

Give people behind the scenes glimpses of your process. People love an inside scoop!

If twitter is a cocktail party, Facebook is a dinner party. Twitter is fast and fun, Facebook can be more in depth.

When you become a social media presence, people will come to your social media accounts with questions, comments and problems

You want to answer them quickly and accurately. Accuracy is only slightly more important than speed in this instance.

Addressing angry customers in social media with excellent customer service can turn a critic into an ambassador almost instantly.

However, not every criticism needs to be addressed. Sometimes people are only mentioning you in passing, and you butting in can be rude.

Social media gives you the opportunity to see what people say about you when they think you’re not around.

Search for your name, and you can find out how people talk about your product.

If people @reply you, they are speaking directly to you or making an effort to get your attention.

Not all @replies require an answer, but some offer great opportunities to turn a customer into a brand ambassador.

Social media allows people to do something we’ve been trying to do since advertising’s inception: foster an emotional connection.

Suwalee: How can I measure ROI for social media?

Me: Without expensive marketing surveys, it can be difficult, but it’s so cheap if you make $50 more a month, it’s already paid for itself, and you’re building brand identity and brand loyalty.

Suwalee: So how do you get new customers to come to you from social media?

Me: That’s where contests and discounts come into play.

After you have a little bit of a following, start offering twitter-only and facebook-only discounts.

“Show this tweet on your phone to get 10% off your next ___” “Comment on this post in order to win a free ___”

The best way to learn about social media is to get involved. Good social media communicators are made, not born.

Suwalee: Have you ever had anybody say something so nasty about you that it ruins your day?

Me: Yes, which brings me to trolls.

People who say very nasty things about you on the Internet are called trolls. Their criticisms have no merit, they are simply mean.

Suwalee: It’s because it’s in public that makes it worse, other people could read that and believe it!

The nature of ‘public’ has changed. Everybody has just as much ability to be ‘public’ as anybody else now.

People unfamiliar with social media tend to assign value to anything that’s published, but that’s no longer the case.

The reason social media is good for small businesses and individuals is the same reason it can be bad: Everyone can have their say.

And sometimes what people have to say is really dumb, if not downright mean.

Trolls should be ignored, and whenever possible, their comments should be deleted. Trolls make the comment section a hostile environment.

In the party analogy, the troll is the guy who’s too drunk and is trying to start fights. Eject him, he doesn’t belong here.

In conclusion: Be a good, interesting person, have a good, interesting product, tweet about it and people will follow.

RT @AmHamShow: @MarinaRMartinez clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap

If you’re interested in learning more about my social media strategy, or you want to talk to me privately about your social media plan, feel free to ask questions in the comments, or email me at marinarosemartinez (at) gmail [dot] com. I can set up a training for you personally, for a group of people or at your company.

October 13, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge: KATG’s Hottest

At about 5:00 p.m. this evening, I put the word out on twitter that I was accepting Design Challenges. At 7:20 p.m., having no other challengers, Keith and The Girl‘s own programmer extraordinaire, Doug won with his request that I do something in honor of the Annual KATG Hottest Contest, in which male and female fans of the show compete to be named Hottest Fan.

So, I started with a little plotting and some sketching. Pretty quickly, I set on a theme that I liked.

And, a short 3 and a half hours after I accepted the challenge, 20 and a half hours ahead of my 24 hour turn-around promise, my design challenge is complete.

Click on the image to see it full size.

I feel like it’s missing some snappy copy there at the bottom, and I even left some space for it if I can think of anything. It should say something like “stand out” without actually saying something as over-used as “stand out.”

I decided not to use the Keith and the Girl logo for two reasons. One being that I didn’t want to use it without their permission, and the other that I felt like it would complicate the simple themes of the piece.

What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Seen it before? Let me know in the comments.

September 4, 2011

Felt?

I’ve been following the blog of Melissa Crowe, a fiber artist out of Portland Maine. Checkout Girl always has the most adorable felt-work pieces on it, and I always wonder to myself if I could do anything remotely like that. Well, thanks to my latest disaster hobby: drop spinning, I got a chance to try tonight. Anything to avoid admitting drop spindle defeat.

Anyway, I had some felt, embroidery thread and a small embroidery hoop, so I thought I’d play around a little. I started with clouds, because it was the only shape I could think of at the time. I had absolutely no plans when I started this.

I actually hate embroidery. Like, with a passion. I was a little worried that my embroidery hate would make this another drop spindle situation, but I was wrong. The felt makes this as fun and effortless as coloring, but as classy as embroidery. It’s a win win.

The clouds went down quickly and I got my next idea, a bird. Thankfully I had twitter bird blue on hand.

I stitched the back wing in a darker blue because on twitter, the birds back wing is slightly darker than the bird and the fore-wing.

This is an example of why planning ahead might have been a good idea. The third cloud is totally lost here. Oh well.

The beak goes on. This was the most embroidering I’ve done in years, and it still sucks. Believe me.

Legs were a lot easier, just a simple chain stitch.

The final touches are ready to go on.

I decided to use the space available to put my old sobriquet and short-lived business name, LARD.

Since I plan on using that hoop again, I couldn’t just leave it on there, so I took it off, and sewed another piece of the same fabric to the front of it, leaving just enough of a hole to turn the patch inside out again.

And here it is. Ready for… something. I really have no idea what. But it felt nice to do some fiber art again. Since my wrists started acting up, my knitting has basically ground to a halt, and I’ve been looking for a craft that can take it’s place. I’m not sure if this is it, but I really enjoyed this project. And it only took an hour or so.

Anyway, you should really check out Checkout Girl, and her corresponding etsy store. It’s much better and more adorable than this.

August 5, 2011

Twitter Tells Me: Douching, Public Anxiety and Hashtag Hate

@Tuttle88 asked: why do women, specifically American women, douche?

Well my foreign friend, America isn’t called the land of milk and cheese for nothing.

Actually, I don’t really know. Being an American woman who refuses to douche, or do any of the idiotic, damaging and unnatural and downright snatch-unfriendly things advertisers tell us to, I have no idea what’s wrong with these cunts. As you know, Americans invented everything, which means that modern advertising was born and tested here. So we’ve been getting decades and decades of slick professional messages telling us to wash away the filth of our sinful mama makers. Eventually, even a reasonable lady might look at the vagina shaped hand puppet in that horribly racist Summer’s Eve commercial and think “you know, maybe my clam sandwich should actually smell like fresh cut grass.”

God damnit. It looks like Summer’s Cleave up and took all their commercials off of youtube. That’s just no God damn fun. Trust me when I say they were creepy, bad and racist. And baaad!

Anyway, douching is stupid.

ThereminJelly said: I did some public performing the other day. How about something about anxiety in public? Or about dealing with it.

I’m ok with performing in public, or speaking to large groups, that’s cool. But if I have to stand in a long line or shop in a crowded store, my palms get sweaty. Something about all those people, pushing up towards you, zombie-like with their mismanaged children and carts full of gallon vodka really makes a heart beat faster. And not in the fun way. In a horrible way.

It’s especially bad if the shelves in the store are tall. If I can’t see over them, I get a choking feeling in my throat and the music from psycho starts playing in my spleen. Obviously I’m being a little dramatic for entertainment value, but those things do bother me about being in public near people I don’t know.

I usually try to get away from the main density of the crowd, or I take out my phone and distract myself from my doom. Also, deep, even breaths.

JoshAintFunny suggested: blog about something you hate (or disklike heavily if ‘hate’s’ too strong a word for you)

I am really starting to hate this stupid fucking hashtag meme. You know what I’m talking about. It started on twitter as an ironic and cutesy joke where you would tweet something like “washed the dog today” and then add the adorable precious hashtag like #coveredinwater, because you get #coveredinwater when you wash a fucking dog. Right?! I can’t take the funny, it’s literally killing me from every possible direction #notreally.

Now it’s simply everywhere. The whole sloppy internet is covered in ballsackingly lame hashtag footnotes to things big and small. “Had another stupid baby #freetummytuck.” “Dad killed himself while jerking off yesterday #familyvacation.” “Fucked a warm melon with your face painted on it in my own wine-dark blood #pleasetakemeback.” It’s unbearable. I’ll even admit to having participated in this madness myself, but that was weeks ago, in the heady go-go upshot of what became this horrible plague meme. I make amends for my part in it, and I need this shit to end.

June 3, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge: Things I Learned

After the latest and first ever Twitter Design Challenge, I learned some things.

First of all, sucking so much is definitely painful, make no mistake. But I think that this has to be done, and as long as it has to be done, I might as well do it with you watching and commenting.

This is like the “What I Wore” series in that, no matter what happens, even though it might be a little crappy at times, I’ll come to a greater understanding of my subject in a real way that will change my eye and affect my choices down the line.

In the future, I’m going to need a time limit. It took me almost 3 days to produce the last design challenge, and that’s a turn-around I’m not happy with. I’m also going to have to stick to one concept at a time. Trying to do two separate assignments and then blog about them both felt scattered and I didn’t give either one the attention it deserved. If people are going to be nice enough to help me out with design ideas, I should honor their request with my full attention. I should treat each concept with as much seriousness and effort as I treat my assignments at work, or that I would treat a freelance job were I to ever get one. This is something that’s going to be on my blog in perpetuity, which means that, more than just content, this may be an illustration of my working style over time.

In real life, I ask for as much time as possible to research and outline the work I do, so the finished product can be the best quality I’m able to produce. But when it comes to the blog, I frequently have other things going on that take presidence. So, the time limit is there to ensure that content gets produced in a timely manner, without taking up too much of my real life and without yoking my twitter followers to the plow of anticipation.

The problem with the inaugural Design Challenge was that I didn’t treat the requests seriously, not that I didn’t have enough time. I understand that the whole point is to get the shitty work behind me, but there’s no reason to be cute about it. It’s going to be crap without me making it crappier by preemptively holding back effort on that account.

So, in the interest of self-improvement, the next Twitter design challenge will follow these rules:

1 tweet.
1 concept.
24 hours.
Everything goes up, all work is shown.

So I’m extending the challenge, here and on twitter: Tweet or comment a concept to me, I’ll pick one of them, and 24 hours after I announce the one I pick, I’ll post the results on this blog for all to see.

April 12, 2011

Twitter Again

Today I went back to twitter for more inspiration.

TheNoid13 wanted to hear about video games.

I feel that I’m a somewhat unexpected video game fan. I never played video games growing up, I didn’t get into them in high school, I really had no interest in them until college, when I started dating my amazing boyfriend, who is an avid computer and video game player.

For the uninitiated video gamer, there is definitely a learning curve. This can ruin the game experience for a spoilsport like myself. However, when you’re young, broke and without cable, the siren song of an adjacent xbox can really be compelling. Keep in mind that college is a special time in a young person’s life when an xbox isn’t hard to come by, but money for a matinee or a dinner not wrapped in paper is an extravagance too far.

Having acquired access to this new toy, and a library of games through the process of sexual conquest, I began my xboxing rather tentatively, but before long I was hooked. I’ve always been the kind of person that has difficulty watching television without something in my hands. All those years of knitting in front of the TV, bored out of my mind and I could have been playing video games. If only I hadn’t been so damn poor.

Video games solved all of TVs boringness problems by being completely better than TV in basically every way. No more watching helplessly as the protagonist does stupid tricks for my entertainment dollar. Now I’m the one doing stupid tricks, and loving every moment of it! Don’t like something? Shoot it. Can’t shoot things in this game? Then what the hell is it doing in this house?!

One of the best things about video gaming is that this is a completely new form of entertainment. Having born witness to the changes in the industry just since I started gaming is amazing. Everyone points to graphics and player interface as being the main things, but I think that we discount the writing at our own peril. Gamers are more likely to care about a story these days, and I don’t think it’s because we all suddenly discovered our feminine side.

The stories in games are becoming tangible in a way they’ve never been before. This isn’t Mario saving the princess, it’s not even the princess saving Mario. Game developers like BioWare (“Mass Effect,” “Dragon Age”) are taking games to a literary level, creating whole worlds and universes that you can save or destroy at your whim. We’re all familiar with the concept of a reader, a listener or a viewer, but the player is a new breed of media consumer. And as games become increasingly refined, many of us who never expected to will be adding that to our list of consumer credentials.

October 27, 2010

Twitter Tells Me: Break-ups and Dying

I asked Twitter what I should blog about, and this is what I got:

diamondmanaphy: @marinaisgo Have you ever gone through a break up without first having the relationship?

Not that I know of, but I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve been through friend break-ups that might as well have been romantic break ups, and I’ve been through romantic breakups that might has well have been a lunch order. I remember a guy I had been hooking up with for several months told me some dramatic crap about how I was going to be great someday and left my house in a sulk. I didn’t know until I heard he was getting married to someone else that he’d broken up with me that day. But I’ve been through friend break-ups with girls that dragged on, involved crying, late nights and comfort eating. Basically every sick convention of young romance has happened to me, except with female BFFs that weren’t really FF, if you know what I mean. Ultimately I think that was probably safer for me because if I had all that drama along with a sexual relationship, I think I would be a basket-case. Well, more of a basket-case at any rate

ThereminJelly @Marinaisgo Ways you wouldn’t want to die?

Sometimes I think I want to go fast so I won’t have to suffer. Other times I think I’d like to be able to prepare and get my things in order, make peace and say goodbye. I haven’t had a lot of people dye in my life, so I’m not familiar with death. I wouldn’t want to die in a hospital, and I wouldn’t want to die suffering or in a panic. Obviously I wouldn’t want to die at the hands of another person, and I don’t want to die young. My definition of “”young” changes with every birthday I have. I’ll probably be 90 and still worried about dying young.

Having spent a lot of time trying to ‘swim’ as a very young child, I know that drowning is really pleasant at a certain point. At first, you’re panicked, but then as the brain starts to be deprived of oxygen, everything seems really beautiful and comfortable. I have a distinct memory of being surrounded by water and light thinking “this is so nice.”