I was a boy back when the milk man still came around in his blue-and-white panel truck delivering bottles of milk with Elsie the Cow on them. I don’t remember clearly because I was only 4 years old back when I first became aware of being a boy in this world instead of being something else living somewhere else.
There were many things I didn’t know or understand back then. But one thing I did know was that I loved Elsie the Cow. And why would a farm boy love a cartoon cow? There were many not-so-sensible reasons.
For one thing, Elsie the Cow reminded me of June Lockhart, Lassie’s mom, and the mom from Lost in Space.
It may be that June Lockhart’s eyes reminded me of Elsie’s, being large, soulful eyes with long black eyelashes. It may be that she starred in a TV commercial for Borden’s milk in which Elsie winked at me at the end of the commercial.
Or maybe it was because Elsie had calves and was a mom. And June Lockhart was Lassie’s mom and the mom of Will Robinson, so I associated both of them with my mom, and thus with each other.
Elsie gave you milk to drink and always took care of you that way. Milk was good for you, after all. My own mom was a registered nurse. So they were alike in that way, too.
And she was constantly defending you against the bulls in your life. She stood up to Elmer to protect her daughter more than once. Of course, her son was usually guilty of whatever he was accused of, but she still loved him and kept Elmer from making his “hamburger” threats a reality.
And you can see in numerous ad illustrations that Elsie’s family were basically nudists. Although she often wore an apron, she was bare otherwise. And though her daughter often wore skirts and her son wore shorts, Elmer was always naked. And that didn’t surprise me, because no cow I knew from the farm wore clothes either. From very early in my life I was always fascinated by nakedness, and I would’ve become a nudist as a youngster if it hadn’t been soundly discouraged by family and society in general.
So there are many reasons why I have always loved Elsie the Cow. And it all boils down to the love of drinking milk and that appealing cartoon character who constantly asks you to drink more.
Stuff That Works
What makes people visit your blog and maybe even click “like”? I should tell you up front, I have no idea how best to navigate the crazy internet. I want to. I have a book to promote. I have ideas and experiences to share. I am a writer and I would like to make something more than excessive heartache out of being one. But how you actually go about it is still a mystery.
I know what I surf the internet for. I like artwork, especially original artwork. That is why I try to post as much of my own stuff as I can. I am an amateur artist, self-taught with a little bit of college art classes, contact with real artists, and a lot of TV Bob Ross. I surf to find other artists whose stuff catches my eye. I post about artists like Loish, Maxfield Parrish, Paul Detlafsen, and Norman Rockwell. I go to sites like DeviantArt (Example at this link) and follow artists like James Brown and Shannon Maer on Facebook. I help promote their work by sharing as often as I can. Do I worry about copyright violation with my artwork? No. I am long past the point of making a profitable career as an artist. I like having people see my work and if someone decides to claim they are the artist instead of me, I have the real originals and even some pictures of work in progress. The Big Eyes thing will not happen to me.
So sharing pictures seems to matter. I got lots of hits from the monster picture post because I used a lot of monster-movie images that people normally search for on the internet. Pictures of pretty girls work too. It doesn’t seem to matter if I drew them or if they are a picture of a relative, those pictures pull people in too.
Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.
Yes, I do believe I have just intimated that Minnie Mouse is my niece, a daughter of my sister-in-law. Lying is part of blogging. You have to put spin on things and make people understand the things they want to understand more than you need them to see what is really true in the empirical sense.
Being able to put the words “nude” or “naked” in titles or in the tags brings in more views too. Those words get lots of hits on search engines and some of the people who visit my blog looking for that actually read what’s posted. Just because an idea is a little bit naughty, it doesn’t mean only perverts and bad people respond to it.
This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.
And it doesn’t hurt to be a little funny now and then. Humor is something I look for in the posts of others. I try to be funny in my posts too… though whether they are hah-hah funny or merely eeuw! funny is debatable. Much of my humor is only intended to raise a smirk or half a smile. I am most satisfied when I make you think, “heh, that’s right, isn’t it.”
This is Millis, not me. He was an actual rabbit that was turned humanoid by a scientist’s experiment with alien technology.
So why is this post called Stuff That Works if, as I am claiming, I really don’t know anything about how blogging works? I may have been a little less than truthful when I made claims. Or maybe I was claiming with a little bit of “tongue in cheek”? I hope I have demonstrated that I do know how. The thing I have yet to wrestle with is WHY. So now I have to get busy and work on that.
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