Someone's been very naughty!

If you crash land on lostintheivy.com, I know you’ve been here. I might not know who you are, but I know that someone has been here. There are footprints left all over the place, marking where people have been. Most of the tracks left behind are of the average-ordinary variety. But every once in a while you find one that leaves you scratching your head.

That’s what happened this morning when I was reviewing the activity on my blog and uncovered that someone had been linked to me via a Google search at 9:44 last night. Now that’s not the unusual part. People have stumbled into my blog by way of Google and other search engines before. But this one was different. I have no idea who this individual is (and I don’t think I’d want to know) but he or she got lost on my blog by using the following search terms: supernanny jo frost nude pics.

Indeed, if you do use the above search terms on Google, you will be linked to my online journal. As of this morning,Google ranked my site number 10 out of 15 for those who are doing the “supernanny jo frost nude pics” search. Perhaps after this posting I’ll move up a notch or two.

So why does Google list my site when someone is searching “supernanny jo frost nude pics?” Well, because I have written on my blog a piece that references Jo Frost of the hit ABC reality series “Supernanny.” I have also written a piece where I declared that I “don’t do nudes,” in reference to a suggestion that I pose for my author photo in the fashion that made model Nastasjja Kinski famous – with a snake wrapped around my naked body. Apparently those two journal entries were all it took to lead the “supernanny jo frost nude pics” Google-searcher to my blog.

But for me there is still a burning question lingering heavily in the air. What is it about Jo Frost (aka Supernanny) that would stimulate anyone to search for nude pictures of her? It seems to me that she's gone out of her way to be the antithesis of sexy, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and putting her brunette locks up in an old-maidish hair bun.

Recently ABC broadcast the UK version of her reality nanny intervention series and it was evident that she's received a bit of a makeover since jumping stateside. But sex appeal? I just don't see it. Perhaps there's a twisted Mary Poppins fixation thing going on. Or perhaps some out there are turned on by the way she authoritatively waves that index finger at those "very naughty" boys and girls.

Now I can hear Supernanny, in that proper English accent of hers, castigating that person seeking the nude pictures of her -- "Your behavior's absolutely unaseptible. You're going straight to the naughty step."

Update on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 at 03:55PM by Randy Richardson

It's happened again. This afternoon another wayward surfer drifted onto my website after a Google search for "jo frost supernanny nude." I can just imagine that those who get lost in my ivy must be quite disappointed when their search comes up empty. One journal entry about the perils of kid-friendly shopping carts I suspect is enough to scare them away for good.

Steering clear of kid-friendly shopping carts

Connect child and friendly with a hyphen and you’re asking for trouble. At least that’s been my experience.

Take, for example, child-friendly shopping carts. If you’ve been in a grocery store recently, you’ve surely seen them. They’re the suped up carts that are all the rage among that key grocer demographic: toddlers.

In most cases, they take the form of plastic race cars, attached to the fronts of standard-size shopping carts. If you’ve never seen one, you can check out the latest model of the “Bean” cart, manufactured by Salem, Mass.-based McCue Corp. by clicking here. As McCue’s website announces, these carts deliver “60 smiles an hour.” Cute.

Of course the demographic being served by these steering-wheel equipped carts is not really toddlers, but exasperated parents desperate to keep their kids entertained – and contained. The theory being, if the tykes are happy, the parent who has dragged them along to the grocery store will have a more relaxed, enjoyable shopping experience and, in turn, will be inclined to spend more.

According to this February 5, 2003, DuluthNewsTribune.com article, market analysts have calculated that parents tend to spend 10 to 40 percent more if the kids are with them and in a relatively good mood. And the number goes even higher when dad does the shopping.

This theory was put to the test this past weekend, when Mommy asked me to join her and The Toddler on their weekly trip to the grocery store. Upon entering the store on a busy Saturday afternoon, there was a noticeable shortage of carts. That’s when Mommy spotted it, parked alluringly in its own private spot, the empty miniature race car/cart.

Mommy eyed me, cradling The Toddler in my arms, pointed at the kiddie car/cart and asked, “What do you think? Should we try it?”

And I shrugged and gave the naïve dad response that I would end up regretting for the next three long hours, “Sure.”

Pushing a kiddie car/cart around a busy grocery store I found about as relaxing as teaching a 15-year-old how to operate a stick shift in rush-hour traffic.

As the DuluthNewsTribune.com article I referred to earlier notes, a full-size shopping cart with a plastic racer jutting from the front end easily becomes an aisle-hog. They should have an Oversized Load banner attached to them. At least in the store where we shopped most aisles were so tight that you couldn’t squeeze past a non-racer car/cart. And they’re about as easy to steer as a big rig. The result was that I tended to steer clear of all aisles while Mommy hauled armloads of groceries up and down the aisles.

So you’re probably thinking right now, what about The Toddler? Did he at least enjoy riding in this suped up cart? The answer, of course, is yes. But it’s a qualified one.

Yes, The Toddler seemed to be overjoyed at being Speed Racer in the grocery store. The catch is, all good things must come to an end. In this case, the end comes rather abruptly, at the check-out counter. There is a warning on the race car-shaped grocery cart that it is to be used only inside the store, which means that all of your groceries have to be transferred to a regular cart if you’re going to get them to your car outside. That also meant that The Toddler had to be removed from a place where he was perfectly content.

Rule No. 1 of Parenting: If you have a perfectly content toddler, don’t do anything to disturb that. Like removing a toddler from that “child-friendly” shopping cart.

You see, the child-friendliness claim should come with a proviso – it only lasts as long as the child is in that cart. The moment he is taken out of that cart, his personality takes a U-turn. All the way from the grocery store to the car, The Toddler beat on Daddy as if he were a punching bag. For much of the rest of the evening until the checkered flag was finally waved and he mercifully went to sleep, an elapsed time of approximately two and a half hours, he cried.

The next morning was Easter and the prior evening’s tantrum was seemingly lost in a haze of egg-hunting, bunny cookies and imitation grass. Thankfully, the Easter bunny didn’t hop into a grocery cart.

Help Wanted ad

Yesterday, as I breezed past the local Border's on my way to the post office, I cringed when I caught a glimpse of Jose Canseco's trashy baseball 'roid tell-all, Juiced, displayed prominently in the window. Lately, I've been researching book marketing and, let me tell you, it's a pretty depressing subject -- especially if you're a first-time, non-celeb author like myself. When you consider that the major bookstores are giving limited prime display space to dribble like Juiced, you can begin to see why it's an uphill, almost always losing, battle for authors in my position. The playing field is not only not level, it's barely playable. The grass is overgrown and the dirt is as hard as rock.

Initially I thought I could do all of the promotional work on my own. This included putting together a press kit, arranging for book reviews and interviews, lining up book signings, etc. But after a couple of weeks of researching the topic, I now realize that my initial belief was naive. I was trying to push a boulder 10 times my size.

Clearly I was going to need some help in this endeavor. This realization put me in the market for an affordable book publicist. Finding a book publicist, I found, is not all that difficult. Finding an affordable one...that's another matter. Publicity, apparently, does not come cheap. Still, I'm hopeful that I'll find that elusive affordable book publisher somewhere out there.

Asking for help is never easy. We all prefer, I think, to do things on our own -- at least that seems to be true with the male species. But sometimes even men realize that they have to ask for help. This realization might come to them after they've been driving around in circles for hours, but eventually they pull the car over to a service station and ask for directions.

While I was looking up at that massive boulder that was blocking my way, and realizing that I might not be able to afford the cost it would take to move it, I began thinking of ways that it could be moved that wouldn't empty my wallet. That led me to composing the Help Wanted ad below. When I initially wrote it, I did so thinking that I wouldn't send it out until my book was released. I still plan to do that, but I figure the readers of this blog are my most loyal supporters so I'm recruiting them first. If I round up enough volunteers, maybe, just maybe, we can, together, dislodge that boulder.

Help Wanted

Sales agents needed to make new emerging author Randy Richardson’s spellbinding debut novel Lost in the Ivy jump from obscurity to BEST SELLER. No experience necessary. Five simple things you can do –

1. Buy the book. No, scratch that, buy many copies of the book. They make for great gifts or kindling.
2. Buy from Amazon.com. Boost the book’s Amazon sales ranking, a key indicator of how well a book is selling.
3. Write an Amazon book review. Note that you don’t have to buy the book from Amazon to write a review of it on Amazon’s website. Anyone who can write can do it.
4. Tell your friends, family and coworkers about the book. Word of mouth is the best way to generate hype. Besides, they’ll be impressed that you know a real, live published author.
5. Get “lost” in the book. Take it with you on vacation. Enjoy it. Then leave it behind at the hotel for someone else to read. Spread the joy.

If you’re an author and your name isn’t Stephen King, John Grisham or Dan Brown, the odds are better that you’ll be struck by lightning than see your name beside your book on the New York Times Best Seller list. But if you can’t shoot for the stars, why shoot at all?

Even the three esteemed authors named above had to have been no-name authors at one time. They surely couldn’t have gotten to the status they’re at now without a great deal of help from others.

That’s why I now ask for your help. I can’t pay you for your services. But there are rewards that come with the job. You get to read a nice little story that allows you a brief escape from the scramble of everyday life. You also get the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done all you can do to help out a promising, not-so-young author whom you, hopefully, think is deserving of greater recognition than he currently has gotten. And, if lightning does actually strike on that promising, not-so-young author, you’ll get the opportunity to say not only that you know a real, live published author, but that you know the author of the BEST-SELLER Lost in the Ivy.

Yours truly,

Randy Richardson

Author, Lost in the Ivy

My inner child

I thought this blog needed a little levity, so I'm reverting to my inner child on this one. I wrote the poem below, "Three cheers for tears!" earlier tonight, after The Toddler had a series of crying fits that left Mommy and Daddy wanting to cry themselves. You will undoubtedly be able to tell that I've been overdosing on Dr. Seuss lately, too.

Three cheers for tears!

My, oh, my, how that baby cries.

Like a waterfall, tears fall from his eyes.

I know I should not pry.

But I must know why.

Why, oh, why does that baby cry?

Sit down and I’ll tell you why.

I’ll tell you why that baby cries.

But first you must keep your word.

And not repeat what you’ve heard.

Not even to a little bird.

This is just between you and me.

But those tears you see are a magic key.

They take you places you never thought you’d see.

All you have to do is hop in a canoe.

And float on those tears, from Kalamazoo to Malibu, from Honolulu to Peru.

No, it would not be wise to dry those eyes.

Now that I have your ear, know that there’s nothing to fear.

It’s only a tear, my dear.

So let’s hear it for tears.

Three cheers for tears!

Pilot's license

You never know how others will react to what you've written. All you can do is throw it out there and hope for the best. 

Certainly I didn't expect the responses that followed my last journal entry, "Quit your day job." When I wrote that journal entry I did so, at least in part, for therapeutic reasons. It had been a long day. We've all had them. We all have our own ways of dealing with them.  I used to run, but aging knees forced me to curtail that activity. Now I let my fingertips do the running for me, all over the keyboard.

"Quit your day job" was cathatic for me. I didn't write it expecting anything in return. I was surprised, pleasantly so, when I saw the comments that kept popping up at the end of it.

I'm truly humbled and even embarrassed (thanks, Mom) by the comments that followed "Quit your day job." They certainly lifted my spirits, which had been grounded by a dense fog before writing that journal entry.

The Toddler's Gran (aka my Mom) is right. I wasn't cut out to be a pilot. My trembling legs after my first solo flight told me that.

But I did learn how to fly. Writing allows me to take off from and land wherever I want. I go on some pretty incredible journeys and don't even need a passport.

I think writing is the best way to fly.  I never lose my luggage. The only time I need to refuel is when I run into a bad case of writer's block. I have a first-class ticket to any destination of my choosing. And it's a lot safer than flying an airplane.