1. Blog every day.
2. Only blog if you have something useful or funny to say or share

#2 seems to be winning.

The latest in DC's new "We totally respect women, you bet" line of comics, "Helen Keller: Unleashed" is both inspirational and wicked hot!

Remember, a beautiful and confident woman shouldn't have to be ashamed of how she dresses, or chooses to splash about, or carries on all her conversations with Anne Sullivan while one or both of them is dressing or undressing. Don't be a prude or a hater. And don't miss the pivotal 12-page water pump scene!

Next month: "The Diary of Anne Frank."

He defied conventional reasoning and made the unconventional commonplace and obvious.

He proved that technology could be beautiful.

He demanded that technology be easy to use and as foolproof as possible.

He had a simple, unbelievably complicated goal: "“I want to put a ding in the universe.” And he did just that.

As I write this with my finger on the glass of a small, elegant, handheld device that holds every song I like plus my favorite shows and movies and the entire fricking Internet in my pocket, I thank you Steve, for your crazy geniusness.

First, film some poor people in a run-down area. Get some interviews, shoot some driveby footage of dingy houses and trailers, get some charts showing income levels, unemployment, the tanking economy, etc. Edit it together into 5 or 6 minutes of compelling video.

Now create two different documentaries, with different voice-overs, opening and closing sequences, music, etc, but with the identical 5-6-minute video in each one. One documentary talks about how Americans are struggling against adversity with courage and determination, the other talks about how much of our tax dollars go to lazy welfare cheaters and unemployment racketeers.

Easy bet both would be convincing, and it would be a cool demonstration of the power of media spin. Go for it.

Google+: Yes, we're just in time to save you from Facebook's privacy violations and Twitter's treacherous shortness. Look, you can assign different people to different "circles" and then, when you post stuff, you can control which of your social circles gets to see what! Isn't that cool and way more non-evil than Facebook?

The Internet: It really is! Thank you, Google! Um, what's this Profile thing?

Google+: To use Google Plus, you have to create a Google Profile so we can connect all your Google stuff together in a not-at-all creepy way. No big, you can choose how much of your private information other people can see.

The Internet: Thank you, Google! …Wait a minute. We have to provide our real names?

Google+: Yes! This is a social network and we want the name that you commonly go by in daily life, so it's easier for people to find you.

The Internet: What if our real names aren't the ones we commonly go by?

Google+: No problem! There are little fields for nicknames and others names, just use those.

The Internet: And those will be displayed instead of our real names?

Google+: Of course not. Your real name will show up anyway.

The Internet: But I want my non-real name to be the one displayed!

Google+: So use it! But keep in mind that it's a violation of our TOS, and if it gets flagged your account will be immediately suspended without warning, and oh by the way that might also affect your access to other Google products so it's a good thing you don't use any of those.

The Internet: How would it get flagged?

Google+: By someone flagging it. Anyone, really. Or if you make a change to your name in your profile and it doesn't look right.

The Internet: What kind of name wouldn't look right?

Google+: Any name that doesn't fit in a one-first-name/one-last-name style or just sounds, you know, weird.

The Internet: Huh. Who decides if a name sounds weird?

Google+: An ill-trained and overworked Google employee with a book of English baby names. His name is Nick, you'd like him. But it's not a big deal, really. We want everyone to feel comfortable joining us!

People who fear stalkers, sexual predators, abusive exes, criminals they've arrested, violent bigots, or others who might do them physical harm: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who fear reprisals from family, friends, and/or employers over controversial religious, political, or sexual opinions: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who fear harassment, arrest, or death from oppressive regimes for political dissidence: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who have already built up a substantial following and reputation with a pseudonym, pen name, stage name, avatar or entertainment personna: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

Women who have a more pleasant online experience when they're not being hit on all the time: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

Teenagers whose parents don't want them using real names online to avoid being targeted by pedophiles: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People in and outside the U.S. with names that do not fit in the first name, last name format: Can we use our actual names?

Google+: No.

People with real, legal names that just sound weird: Can we use our real names?

Google+: Almost probably!

+Lady Gaga,  +Snoop Dogg, +Soulja Boy, +50 Cent: Can we use fake names?

Google+: Of course! We want everyone to feel comfortable joining us!

The Internet: How do we prove our name is actually our name?

Google+: Nothing could be simpler! Just provide a government-issued ID and we might very well believe you!

People without ID depicting the name they want, people in countries where electronically transmitting an ID is illegal, and people who simply don't want to share ID with an online service without guarantee of how and how long it will be stored: Any other ways?

Google+: Yeah, whatever, give us a link to your Facebook page or something.

The Internet: But couldn't people just make up whatever fake name they wanted as long as it sounded like a normal North American white Anglo-Saxon name and you wouldn't care?

Google+: Probably. The point is, the system works.

The Internet: Couldn't you just require our real names to sign up, but let us choose what names are displayed? You could even let us choose which identities would be displayed to individual circles, which would make Google+ an even more amazing and useful social network.

Google+: Sorry, what? We were busy telling our advertisers about the incredibly targeted information we can provide. But hey, thanks for commenting. Google wants to hear your feedback. As long as we like your name.

Dad was not very social either, not very talkative or open. But sometimes someone would call up and he'd answer the phone and his face would light up. Soon some other middle-aged guy would stop by and they'd talk for hours. Afterward he'd just say he knew the guy from "the service" and let it go at that.

He never told me war stories. I knew he'd been in the Korean War and I'd heard him mention Pork Chop Hill before, but he never brought the subject up around me. Until one day he heard from a buddy that there was a book on the subject and he was mentioned in it. By that time I was accomplished in hunting down wanted books for myself from the network of bookstores up and down the East Coast — this is very, very pre-Amazon — and we managed to get a copy. And he was, indeed, mentioned.

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill is actually two infantry battles fought while the various aggressors in the Korean War were negotiating an armistice. The U.N. won the first battle, but only after two days of heavy fighting with lots of casualties and an unbelievable amount of firepower thrown around. The Hill was near an outpost near the Main Line of Resistance, but didn't actually have a lot of strategic value. On March 23, 1953, a Chinese battalion took the hill. U.N. forces fought to regain it but lost half their men before pulling back.

Dad was in Company F, 17th Infantry, under Captain Monroe D. King. King Company made it to the trenches on the hill but got shelled in ten-minute blasts off and off. When they got there, well…

From "Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man In Action, Korea, Spring 1953" by S.L.A. Marshall:

First man to enter the Pork Chop works, Cpl. William H. Bridges, saw two Chinese rise from among the rocks beyond the parados and fire directly on First Platoon with submachine guns. He yelled, "Watch out!" and dove for the trench. The burst cut down five men close behind him.

Pvt Rudolph Gordon made the trench almost at the same moment. Turning leftward, he started for the second bunker down the line. Three grenades came at him from behind its far wall. They fell short. He and Bridges grenaded back. But protected by the bunker mass, the Chinese grenadiers played African dodger, revealing head and shoulder just long enough to heave their potato mashers.

Within the perimeter which the group formed on the knob were three small, partly collapsed bunkers. Eight or nine of the worst-spent men took shelter under their sandbag walls. The others moved into nearby shell craters. The holes were not deep enough for good cover. Using spoons, knives and bayonets for the work they lacked the strength to wield the small entrenching tool they tried to widen and deepen them. The only other activity was an endless cleaning of rifles and carbines, done with toothbrushes, the standby equipment of the soldier when nothing else will free his grimed rifle. Kuzmick set the example.

The others followed it, though their response was trancelike. Since early morning they had been without water. Faces caked, tongues thickened by the dust shower which plagued the hill, under lashing by the guns and mortars, they no longer talked to each other. Nor did they move from their places except when shaken loose by an exploding shell. From the foreground, an almost constant bullet fire rained upon the knob. Occasionally, a grenade came sailing in. Yet they saw not a single human target, and therefore made no attempt to return fire. In the end that perhaps mattered very little, since most of them no longer had sufficient strength to raise weapon to shoulder and aim. Than this, there is no more moving entry in the record of King, that young Americans too exhausted to fight may still obey such group discipline as their enfeebled resources permit. It was to be their portion for four hours.

"We lay there and took it," said Corporal Bridges. "There was nothing else to do." To the few who endured it, the earlier trials of the day seemed nothing compared with this final test. Hit and harassed, endlessly cleaning weapons with no valid hope of again using them, they still held ground. The earth and rock banks which they had raised above their small craters were creased and scattered by the bullet storm. The enemy artillery, which had ranged widely over Pork Chop, now concentrated against this one small area of defiance. The embankments caved in. The sandbag walls were flattened. Repeatedly, the men were buried under the dirt shower. Weapons freshly cleaned were refouled. Again the toothbrushes were plied. In this way continued the monotonously deadly round. At the end, fourteen had survived it, sick and shaken but relatively whole-bodied. Seven were Americans, the others ROKs.

The book reads like a love letter. Marshall wrote as if all soldiers were gods, using fiercely overblown prose that raises those men to unmatchable deities. And maybe, for that time, they were. Dad seemed quietly proud that we'd read it, even as he told us to forget about it. I think he was glad we knew, but was even gladder we found out from someone besides him, if that makes sense.

My dad acted bravely, both in actions and in endurance, fighting for his country. But 33 other men in King Company who acted just as bravely never came off the Hill.

To my knowledge, I have not lost any immediate family or friends in combat, and in that I know that I am extremely fortunate. Dad died of lung cancer decades after the war, long after seeing his grandchildren born. But today, for his sake, I honor the brave men who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with him those two days in 1953 and never made it home.

But the fact remains that someday all hell will break loose. If not Rapture, then nuclear war or asteroid attack or zombie outbreak or giant mutated lizard or just plain economic collapse. There's no way to know for sure what will happen before, what will happen then, and what will happen after, but things will change and you will change with them or you will most surely die. Are you up to the challenge? Are you ready to face directly into either the confirmation or utter denial of everything you've ever believed in?

If you're the person I think you are, you're not only ready but eager, and you've got front-row tickets as well as back-stage passes to the cast party after the invasion. But there will be strange and trying times, so here's some tips on how to spend your last days on Oith.

1 ) If you have warning, max out all of your credit cards and sell your stocks short. Buy everything you've ever wanted, pick up a complete collection of all the movies produced between 1953 and 1986, buy a car with your Discover Card. Why not? Borrow stuff from everybody you know, just so you can roll on it. Or stock up on ammo, non-perishable food items, chlorine tablets, and hand-cranks to recharge your iPod, just in case.

2 ) Or take your newly-gotten gain and buy a lot of land. Fence it in, a real fence, the kind that'll bring a tear to the eye of an Arizona lawman. Build two entrances, one heavily guarded main gate and a small, hidden, back gate. Build a huge, well-lit, well-guarded, luxurious-looking house in the middle. Build a small, comfortable, hidden house by the back entrance. Live in the small house. Mount three fully automatic machine guns facing the big entrance. During the riots and insurrections of the End Days you'll be able to sit back, free from worry, and spend your time idly gunning down the rampaging crowds that try to break in. Guaranteed hours of fun for the whole family!

3 ) If you need to go out for supplies during the violent times, wear a Kevlar suit and cover it with wiring. Put some highway flares on your chest and back with duct tape and run wires from them to an old garage door opener. Keep that in your hand at all times. Keep your eyes wide and glaring. Go about your business, no one will bother you.

4 ) Learn to give really good oral sex. Whether you're male or female, if there's the slightest chance that you won't be the local tribal chieftain then you'd better learn to dive down there with a smile. There won't be many renewable commodities that you can lay hands on in a hurry, but if you follow my advice you'll always be welcomed.

5 ) When the sun goes nova do not look at it directly. This can cause irreparable damage to your eyes. Take two pieces of cardboard, 8" by 8", and paint them black. Using a needle (ask your parents for help) make a pinhole in the center of one of the pieces. Now hold them up so that the sun's explosive force will go through the hole onto the center of the other card. In the split picosecond before you burn away screaming into a puff of greasy ash you'll be able to see the image reproduced perfectly on the second piece of cardboard. Do not use smoked glass.

6 ) Take the time now to learn how to tell groceries by touch alone. You may have to spend quite a few months scuba-diving in supermarkets for sustenance, and this will let you scoop out the good stuff before everybody else. Lock yourself in your closet and memorize the feel of fruit juice cans, the distinctive shape of packaged ham, and discover the foolproof way to distinguish tuna fish from cat food.

7 ) Just for fun, get three friends and four different colored horses and ride through the streets in flowing robes and serious expressions.

8 ) If things threaten to get nuclear you have two choices: A. Move to where the bombs won't hit, or B. Move to where they will. Your preference would depend on your attitudes towards Armageddon, post-holocaust living and the afterlife, and are entirely up to you. If you move to where the bombs are sure to hit, try to go with style. Move to ground zero. Paint an X spreading out from your house. Invite friends over for the Big Blowout. If you know the bombs are coming, go out there with a bat and see if you can set one off before it hits. Take some friends and a blanket and try to catch one.

9 ) Plan for your food supply. Watching for good sales at Publix won't cut it in an aftermath situation. Instead, raise bunnies; they're fairly cheap to feed, don't take up much space, breed like, well, rabbits, and they make good eatin'. Leave the eyes in, though. Best part, man, really.
Also, and I'm just saying, you might want to look up which parts of your neighbors are edible.

10 ) As much as circumstances will allow, nail anything you can get it up for. Since radiation of all wavelengths will be thrown around like hairspray when the End happens, fertility might be an iffy thing and generations of the future may depend on whomever had the forethought to spread his seed from here to Tierra del Fuego. Think of it! Legions of your sons and daughters, marching under your guidance and tutelage! Your features will become the standard of beauty, you will rule as the literal father of the country. Hey, if nothing else it's a good line to use tonight.

There follows a few miles of mental gymnastics. My two thoughts stay with me for several miles. Did anyone else see that? Have emergency crews been called? Nothing was moving, so either the person(s) involved is out or already gone and the car is still there. Should I go back and make sure? Should I go back and get a picture?

I pulled off at the next exit and went back.

Fortunately emergency people (a roadside assistance truck and some firefighters) were on the scene, inspecting the car. And again I had a choice to make before I had to pull over or get back on the highway: stop and get pics of the scene? Or go on in to work?

I went to work. And I've been bummed since.

I could have stopped. I have press credentials, I know how to be polite and respect the emergency crews and not get in the way. And it would have been an amazing shot that could have made it into news-journalonline.com or the print edition or both. And my gut instinct was to keep moving, and I'm wondering why.

Part of it, I think, is my long-held habit of not wanting to be in the way, something you have to shed and shed quickly to be a journalist*. But the larger problem is that I can't quite make myself take pictures of what could be someone in pain. A car in the trees, absolutely. A car in the trees with someone hurt inside it?

No.

I was talking to one of our crime reporters a few weeks ago, right after the earthquake in Haiti, and he mentioned he'd love to be there with his camera. I told him I could never do that, I'd drop the camera and start digging right away.

"I can make a wall," he said. "You have to put that wall between you and what you're seeing or you can't report on it."

I don't have a wall. And don't really want one.

I'm still bummed I didn't stop immediately, as soon as I saw the car, to help anyone inside. But I think I'm OK with not hanging around snapping pics. Walls can be handy, but the more you use them they can be tough to put away when you don't want them around.

* I know, you can be a journalist without reporting on people's pain. Work with me, here.

So. How to continue it?

One thing I would like to try doing in 2010 is taking more photos. I'm not going to commit to one  a day – frankly, most days I don't go near much of anything interesting (when Adam Levermore was here for the @nasatweetup it dawned on me, as I was driving him around Daytona, that I was going the way I always go to avoid traffic and hassle  and was consequently showing him only the most boring and industrial parts of one of the most famous tourist towns in the world. Sorry, Adam). But this is Florida, after all, and I should be able to find something to point at.

I'm also going to keep trying the daily posts, and we'll see how that goes. Be warned.

And happy new year!

'So Fox decreed that they should be paid more for their programming based on the innovative business model "We Want More Money For The Same Product Because We're Pretty Sure We Can Make You Do It."And Time-Warner (and locally, their Bright House partner or affiliate or henchman or whatever the relationship is) is resisting, based on their own tried and true business model, "We Ain't Paying You Jack."

Meanwhile, millions of affected customers are fearfully watching the two monsters battle, crushing buildings in their wake, with only one terrified thought: "Am I going to miss the Sugar Bowl because of these idiots?"

In a nutshell, Fox wants money for its previously free programming. Time-Warner (and locally their partner Bright House) doesn't want to pay. Both mega-companies have been flooding the local airwaves, TV and newspapers with ads claiming the people are on their side and demand that the other party to back down.

Personally, I'm not too bothered by the Fox/Time Warner smackdown and wouldn't be affected if Fox disappeared from my TV. I'm not a football fan, most of their programming actively bothers me, and I can watch the last episodes of Dollhouse on Fox.com, Hulu.com, or get 'em from iTunes a day later. Worst case scenario, I have to wait til summer and buy the DVD set. That's about it for me and Fox-owned shows these days, although I have plenty of friends who would miss Glee and Fringe. (Note that FOX News would not be affected, dammit)

But hey, guys? The people are not on your side. Honest. We distrust both of you more or less equally. We know that you are not providing us with entertainment out of the goodness of your hearts, and that you need to stay profitable to do what you do. However you work that out is fine by us, but we know already that no matter what happens, our rates will go up. We are not your friends or your grassroots army. Please stop trying to rally us as a way to bully the other guy. Just work it out, let us know what the hike will be and let's move on with our lives.

Be sure to read the rest of my column, which suggests ways to make do without Fox. It's surprisingly easy, something both companies might want to think about.