Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Read more about the article Amazon Rank, #AmazonFail

Amazon Rank, #AmazonFail

Amazon Rank = #amazonfail
Amazon Rank = #amazonfail

I’m probably one of Amazon.com’s favorite types of customers, living and working in spitting distance of a Barnes & Noble, Borders and several good independent booksellers, browsing their shelves but doing most of my book buying via Amazon. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars with them, on books (and other products) for myself and others, including the Kindle I bought for my wife last Fall as a birthday gift.

I’ve contributed 113 reviews to their database to-date, and currently have a reviewer rank of 3,064 on the basis of 864 helpful votes. I was a charter reviewer in their Amazon Vine initiative, and have used their Amazon Associates program for years on this blog and with Spindle.

I think they have helped level the playing field in the publishing world and opened the door for savvy independent authors and publishers to distribute their work without going through the traditional gatekeepers.

Suffice to say, I’m a big fan, so it pisses me off to be writing a post like this in response to their screwing up royally with their Amazon Rank fiasco that’s burning up Twitter at the moment and is spilling over into the longer-lasting blogiverse/Google memory bank.

(more…)

Continue ReadingAmazon Rank, #AmazonFail
Read more about the article History of the Bronx, For Kids

History of the Bronx, For Kids

Bronx River Parkway Overpass-1 by kptyson
Bronx River Parkway Overpass-1 by kptyson

I have very mixed emotions about the Bronx, where I grew up for the first 12 years of my life (1969-1980), and which remains the closest thing I have to a place I consider home, in a cultural sense. Being able to live there again while my kids were still young was very important to me, even though I knew we’d have to move at some point soon after they started school, and the five years we did were a great experience, positive and negative, allowing me simultaneously reconnect and disconnect before taking the inevitable next step of homeownership.

When my son, Isaac, came home with the assignment to put together a family cultural project — Where Are You From? — I wasn’t sure how to approach it from my side of the family, especially in contrast to my wife’s much more specific and rich Cuban heritage. I’m a mutt without a home, the epitome of a melting pot kid (or is that salad bowl?), with connections to many cultures but no firm roots in any.

Focusing on the Bronx was an interesting and enlightening challenge, especially when trying to boil it all down to a 3rd grade level, and by the end, I was left with the same mixed emotions, a combination of pride and disappointment, hope and disdain. I emphasized the positive, of course, but I’d be lying if I denied the bitter taste of the negative wasn’t still on my tongue, things like the new Yankee Stadium, the miserable public school system and the general feeling of it being a second-class citizen in New York City, on par with or sometimes behind Staten Island.

(more…)

Continue ReadingHistory of the Bronx, For Kids
Read more about the article Attack of the Social Media Gurus

Attack of the Social Media Gurus

Scream Duck at it again. by digicolleen
Scream Duck at it again. by digicolleen (permission granted)

Have you heard, yet? EVERYBODY is on Twitter!

It’s grown 1,382,000% since last year!

Even William Shatner is using it!

This may come as a surprise but I don’t have a degree in acting. http://tinyurl.com/ct6sut Please subscribe to my YouTube channel

1:54 PM Mar 21st from web

Also, Google is dead; Facebook is broken; and those dreadlocked guys with the funny dance moves are lip-synching!

Okay, fine, Rob and Fab really couldn’t sing, but if any of the 8 million people who bought their album back in 1989 did so because of their videos and dancing, they deserved to be duped. The rest is hyperbolic BS that’s been floating around the Twitterverse lately, mostly promoted by self-proclaimed social media gurus trying to make a quick buck, and websites like Mashable, which recently changed its tagline to “The Social Media Guide”, looking to capitalize on a trend and boost their ad impressions.

Seriously, can we get a little perspective here?

(more…)

Continue ReadingAttack of the Social Media Gurus
Read more about the article Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 8

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 8

Prompt: Write a poem about either a specific routine or routines in general.

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER

The beginning of a new
season revives the spirit,
like a clown handing a child
a bright new balloon
that will pop five minutes
after he gets it home.

Being a Mets fan
from the Bronx
requires a thick skin
quick wit, and high
threshold for bitter
disappointment.

Being a Jets fan
anywhere, post-1969,
is simply masochistic.

(more…)

Continue ReadingPoem-A-Day Challenge: Day 8
Read more about the article Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 7

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 7

Prompt: “Two for Tuesday”: Write a “clean” poem or write a “dirty” poem.

URBAN PLAYGROUND

On my block
trees were few and far
between, caged for
their own good,
roots straining against
concrete manacles for
freedom.

Dirt was plentiful, manmade
— soda cans, candy wrappers,
cigarette butts, lottery tickets
— nothing that could nurture
a seedling or spark the
imagination.

An abandoned, brick-strewn lot
was our playground, perfect
for freeze tag, cops & robbers,
manhunt… escape for some,
practice for others.

We played stickball in the street
dodging between parked and
moving cars, playing the bounce
off a windshield or fire escape,
sliding into the manhole cover
that doubled as home plate
in an exuberant cloud of
blissful ignorance.

(more…)

Continue ReadingPoem-A-Day Challenge: Day 7
Read more about the article Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 6

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 6

Prompt: Write a poem about something missing. It can be about an actual physical object or something you just can’t put your finger on.

NEVER AS SIMPLE AS IT SEEMS

Home used to be defined by
the brief view of Yankee Stadium
from the 4 train as it pulled
into the station.

The House that Jackson, Nettles,
Randolph and Dent built in my
mind was torn down at the turn
of the century by entitlement and
greed, its eventual replacement
financed with promissory notes
of a return to greatness.

An impressively skin-deep replica,
its skeletons are buried in Little League
fields across the Bronx; the seats are
filled with hypocrites, dugouts
and field patrolled by savvy
businessmen.

(more…)

Continue ReadingPoem-A-Day Challenge: Day 6

No more posts to load

Newer Posts
Older Posts