Button Tapper

Like Harriet the Spy, I will hunt down your secrets and reveal excellent truths about you. Unlike Harriet, I'll write a kick-ass bio for you afterwards, instead of humiliating you in my journal.

Since I’m feeling wild, crazy and generous today, I’ve got a special deal for anybody who’s been thinking about having their band, company, or even personal bio/”about me” page written up by a professional. While these types of pieces normally go for hundreds of dollars, today only through March 1, 2010 I’m offering this service for ONLY $25 A POP!

You heard me.

So if you’ve got a band that’s going to be playing at SXSW and you want to really get noticed, now’s your chance to hire a whiz-bang copywriter to kick that thing into overdrive.

If you’ve got a company in need of a more fun (or corporate) explanation of who you are and what you do, I’m down.

Even if you’re just thinking, “Hmm. This ol’ Twitter page could use a refresh,” or “Man, my personal website could use a little TLC!” I’m your gal.

I love writing bios. They’re easily one of the most fun and exciting pieces of information you can write in the field of copywriting, especially if they’re for awesome and exciting people—like you! Plus, I totally understand that most of my friends and clients are broke-ass students, starving artists, or other creative types who can’t afford huge fees just to make their sparkling personalities really shine.

So here’s your chance! Hit me up with a little bit of info about who you are, what you do, where you’re going (or want to go), and what you want to use this biography for (personal use? websites? PR material? marketing campaigns? that kinda thing). You can contact me directly using my contact form, or simply by emailing me at laura [at] buttontapper [dot] com, and we’ll go from there.

Looking forward to working with y’all!

Living in Austin, one of the perks (or downsides, depending on how you view traffic jams and industry insiders taking over your town) is being around for the annual SXSW festival. Having never been to this mega-fest in years past, and always looking on rather enviously, I’m now actually living at Ground Zero for some of the year’s big reveals in the music, film and tech industries.

In the words of Keanu Reeves: WHOA. (And also: DUDE!)

My husband is getting really excited about the music stuff, and has even started a website to profile some of the seemingly millions of kick-ass bands that will be here. We are both miffed by the amount of Canadian has-been bands on the roster (uh… Sum41, anyone?), but aside from that, it’s pretty exciting to know that lesser-known (yet TOTALLY AWESOME) experimental and avant-garde musicians like Zoë Keating are going to be here alongside heavyweights like Broken Social Scene and hometown heroes Spoon to play for an audience of appreciative geeks, nerds and industry insiders.

THE GOOD

I’m also pretty pumped for the film festival side of things, although the amount of “badge required” parties is annoying me at the moment. Obviously, I’m drawn to the “Midnighters” category, described on the official site as “Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark features for night owls and the terminally curious.” (I mean, hello? Cannibal Girls?!) The Headliners Get Low (starring Bill Murray and Robert Duvall), Mr. Nice (starring my favorite wacky Welshman, Rhys Ifans), and The Runaways (Dakota Fanning in a Joan Jett biopic?! and directed by Floria Sigismondi??!??) are all on my Must-See list as well. And even though I really have no idea what connects barbershop quartets to punk rock, I am totally down with seeing interviews with my idols Henry Rollins and Janeane Garofalo in Barbershop Punk.

THE BAD

I am already convinced that Leaves of Grass (starring Edward Norton x2 as identical twin brothers and Richard Dreyfuss [?!] as a drug dealer [?!?] in Oklahoma [!!?!!]) is going to be a pretentious pile of wank. Prove me wrong, but you heard it here first: naming your film after an interminable Walt Whitman transcendental poem is really just too much.

THE FUGLY

Oh, and as for the fugly? I’ve never been able to make it through an entire Harmony Korine film, so Trash Humpers is on my list here. It’s not that I don’t think it’ll be entertaining or worth seeing, exactly. It’s just that Korine is one of those filmmakers that tends to rub me the wrong way. I guess that’s the point of everything he does, but his shock tactics doesn’t really rate with me. I don’t think art necessarily has to be beautiful to be worthwhile, but all doom and gloom all the time isn’t exactly honest, either, is it?

So yeah, SXSW is in the air, and I’m really hoping that the weather here in Austin clears the hell up before the fest gets started, because honestly? Snow in February is a big ol’ mood-killer for this gal, and you better believe no visitors to our fair city will stand for that white crap!

MORE HELPFUL HINTS

Still need a place to stay? I know a joint or two. Let me hook you up with $20 off a 6-day stay at the Extended Stay Hotels in the area. Hey, what’re friends for, yo? Besides, they’ve been spamming the hell outta me since I stayed two weeks with them, so I might as well return the favor…

SXSW runs from March 12-21, 2010. For more info on how to organize your personal SXSW to-do list, read Laura’s Gifted Travel piece here. Be sure to follow Laura on Twitter @originaloflaura to get up-to-the-minute info on all the latest parties, buzz and events!

Y’know, I hate to give any credence to the work of an obvious terrorist and possibly delusional psychopath, but I just read through Joe Stack’s “manifesto” (posted in full by The Huffington Post, despite its being removed from his website by government officials), and I really have to wonder what was going through this guy’s head when he decided to crash his plane into an IRS building in north Austin. Call it professional curiosity, as I’m a writer who’s always in search of a good seed for a story.

First of all, I live fairly close to the IRS building he targeted. I drove past it all the time, never knowing it was an IRS satellite office; it was a nondescript place, much like any other office building in the area. So when the plane first plowed into that building and everyone was freaking out about possible ties to Al Qaeda, I just chalked it up as some poor fool, perhaps someone who hadn’t had enough training as a pilot, making a terrible mistake in trying to land a wounded vessel. It certainly didn’t strike me as the work of a terrorist cell, and having lived in NYC when the 9/11 attacks took place, I didn’t have the same feeling of “Holy shit!” that I did on September 11. I even remarked to the bank teller who called my attention to the TV that if the building was only a few stories high, it wouldn’t be that difficult for escaping employees to jump to safety, unlike those who perished in the World Trade Center attacks. (I didn’t mean for that to sound callous, but to point out the obvious difference between the two attacks and the level of threat involved. The Austin IRS building hit this week was only six stories high.)

Unfortunately, as we now know, this wasn’t a mistake at all; it was an aggravated assault by a disgruntled person in trouble with a government agency.

Now, nobody in their right minds is a big fan of the IRS as an institution, as I’m sure we’ll all agree. They take your hard-earned money out of your pocket at least once every year, and then they hand it over to other government agencies, who spend it on god-knows-what half-baked ideas, wars and whatnot. The IRS is an obvious target for people who are pissed off, though most have the good sense to limit their attacks to angry emails and stand-up comedy types of jabs. Still, I can’t say it’s surprising that someone would make an attack on such a building, since it’s a potent symbol, although I’m not sure why the main branch in Washington, D.C. wouldn’t have made a better target for someone so unhinged as Joe Stack.

But even if you were unhinged and pissed off about how the government was perpetually stealing your money, and even if you owed tens of thousands of dollars to said agency, I don’t see the logic here. Crashing a plane into the side of a building doesn’t solve your debt. (Furthermore, what kind of rich bastard still owns both a plane and a sweet house when he owes several thousands of dollars to the IRS?! Something don’t add up.) Suicide is certainly a response to overwhelming money woes that many people take, but suicide bombing? That’s what we’ve got here, people. His plane itself was the bomb, and flying it into the side of a government building is both a terrorist attack and an act of treason, by most common definitions.

To me, Joe Stack is no hero. He’s no patriot, no “true American,” and he’s certainly no one to emulate. He’s a sad example of someone who thought he was above the law, who thought he could play the system for his own ends and lost big-time. And by flying his plane into the side of that building, he lost any sympathy he could’ve had from any people who might have looked kindly upon his plight. He’s gone, but his debt is not. And now his wife and kid are stuck with it, not to mention knowing that their dear old Dad was a nutbar who totally screwed them over as his last earthly deed. They don’t even have a home to go back to, since ol’ Joe Stack burned it to the ground so that the IRS couldn’t claim it in exchange for all the thousands of dollars he owed them.

What prompts such acts of selfishness and greed? And what prompts others to look upon these selfish acts as “heroic”? I honestly don’t know. And maybe I don’t want to know.

I guess my point is that I can see shades of Fight Club in this story. Fight Club is a story I enjoy as a piece of fiction, precisely because of its anti-authoritarian tones and sense of rebellion against a world gone mad. But Fight Club has one hugely glaring flaw in its storyline that is always overlooked, and that is: blowing up buildings does not erase the debt record. Everything is stored on computers, and even if you were to destroy many computers and their hard drives, that information is undoubtedly stored on many other computers, many other hard drives and systems. Information is replicated all the time, and there will always be copies and copies and copies to fall back on. You cannot erase your debt by destroying physical items, then. You can only erase your debt by committing another illegal act, by hacking into the system and changing 1s to 0s. Period.

For a software engineer, Joe Stack wasn’t very bright. You’d think he would have known this, or figured it out while he was wallowing in self-pity. Violence isn’t the answer, you twit. But maybe computers are.

To be clear: I’m not advocating hacking into anyone’s computers, governmental or otherwise. I may be fascinated by hackers, but I’m not one of them, nor do I have any desire to be. Still, if you really wanted to set everyone on a level playing field, or become a true American hero by liberating the people from their chains the way Joe Stack’s supporters claim he wanted to, you’d need to be a bit more crafty about it. You’d have to be a helluva lot more selfless, and a lot more intelligent. You’d have to have heart, and you’d have to have skills. And you’d have to be a ninja who left no trace, rather than a simian who left a giant suicide note right on his website’s homepage.

There’s undoubtedly a thriller type of novel in the bones of Joe Stack’s story, but not as reality has written it. I still think Stack’s a selfish idiot, a traitor and a terrorist, and if he’d survived his attack on that building, I would’ve advocated harsh punishment, but there’s something to this story that I think people (unfortunate as that may seem) relate to. It’s why people are calling him a hero, even though he isn’t, and the use of the word in this situation is insulting to anyone who is or has been truly heroic (like, say, Robin De Haven, an Iraq war veteran who helped get many of the people working in the building to safety). There’s something more to the story than the simple summary of “disgruntled tax dodger commits suicide,” and I’ve been thinking about this from the perspective of someone writing a short story or novel about it. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else.

In the meantime, what do you think about Joe Stack? Hero or terrorist—or something else entirely?

Fashionistas among us undoubtedly already know about ChicStar.com, a website that offers budding fashion designers the chance to win money for their designs and even have them turned from paper dreams into reality. We not-quite-so-fashionable masses are just discovering their wares, but wow, am I impressed with their selections!

Normally, I’m a pretty big jeans and t-shirts kind of gal, but lately I’ve been trying to step it up a notch in the style department. I’ve got a few nice looking outfits, but I still haven’t taken the big plunge into wearing dresses. They just seem to require so much effort, especially if you’re going to have to wear them all day. Pantyhose. Doing your hair and make-up. Making sure to sit up straight so as not to bunch up the fabric. It’s exhausting!

Still, I’m inspired to go to these great lengths by ChicStar designer Tina Kreider’s Black Polka-Dot Satin Dress (pictured at right). It’s gorgeous and ladylike, with a retro fishtail look to it. It emphasizes your assets (i.e. your T&A and those great womanly curves), and it comes in both classic black and fiery burgundy, depending on your mood. I’m loving both colors, and can’t decide which to choose. Luckily the decision need not be difficult: at only $29.95, you can go ahead and splurge on one of each!

Props, also, to Shoestring Magazine for their Looks for Less: Top 10 Bargain Shops post, which brought me to ChicStar in the first place. Nice picks, ladies; keep up the good work.

Lately I’ve been noticing that my writing has been in a bit of a slump. I only write a blog when I’m riled up about something, and then usually feel like it’s just a rant that isn’t worth posting after the emotions are spent. I’ve been writing really brief blogs about the books I’ve been reading, over at Crack Books, which is fun… but it’s not exactly the stuff of genius. I’ve been writing cover letters and endlessly tweaking my résumé, which is duller work than anything in the world. And then there’s just the sea of words that I feel like I’ve been drowning in, with all the print and web material I’ve got in my “to read” pile.

So I’ve decided to kick it up a notch and put myself on a strict writing regimen, to get things moving in the right direction and change my personal scoreboard from “zero” to “hero.” (Wow, that was cheezy! But somehow true.) Here’s what I’ve got lined up, so you can play along at home if you like:

1. 

   Just try and tell me you don't want to run right out and get one of these New Leaf Paper composition notebooks for yourself! (image via New Leaf Paper)

   7 haiku per day, with coffee. I’ll bust some poetic moves as I drink my morning beverage of choice, getting the creative juices flowing and a feeling of accomplishment at seeing those 5-7-5s line up on the page. I’m doing 7 a day because that’s how many fit on a college-ruled page in my composition book. (Mad props to the New Leaf Paper company, who’ve really sexed up the standard composition-style notebook, all with 100% recycled paper. HOT!) I figure if I keep up this rate, by this time next year I’ll have a book of haiku to publish.

2. Sending out work for publication. Every day I’ll try to find at least one new publication where I can send some of my finished work. I know I tend to procrastinate on this, or just let the stuff sit there, wondering what to do with it. No more! It’ll be out there, circulating, so that even if it’s getting rejected, at least it’s being read. Like they say about the lottery: you’ve gotta be in it to win it.
3. Writing new stories. This is another point: while I do have some finished work I’d like to get out there, I’ve also got to keep updating the files with new work. So, I’d better get on to writing some stories! Every day I’ll work on either starting, editing, or finishing some new bit of work. When I hit a wall with one, start another. Keep ‘em in rotation and see what comes out of it.
4. Finish that novel. I’ve been plugging away on my novel, on and off for a few years. It’s time to get serious, write the stuff that needs to get written, edit the stuff that needs to get edited, and get that sucker done. Just like the short fiction, just keep things moving and keep coming back to those pages. My biggest issue seems to be procrastination, so let’s put it on the To Do list and move it up towards the top, rather than letting it slide daily to the bottom.

That’s the four-pronged approach. I’ll probably still have to keep sending out résumés and cover letters on a daily basis, but I’ve decided to limit it to a manageable amount and do that type of admin work only until noon. After noon, it’s time to write. After all, I’m not an administrator, I’m a writer. Sometimes you have to remind yourself, y’know?

Anyway, that’s my approach. Do any of you have a specific writing routine or regimen that you like to use? Tell me all about it; I’m always curious to know how the rest of the world writes!

P.S. Here’s one of the 7 haiku I wrote today, reflecting on the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games:

Hipsters reading pomes,
A friend asks: “Is this what your
country’s all aboot?”