10 Ways To Make It Big In Journalism.

Dear Guru,

Great to see you here with the feeelance advice?? What advice can you give me, I would like to persue freelance journalism???

സപ്ന അനു ബി. ജോര്‍ജ്ജ്

Well, firstly, try limiting your use of terminal punction to once per scentence.

Secondly, Freelance Journalism seems an odd thing to pursue. I imagine you stalking through the words, a loaded pen over your shoulder. “Be vewy vewy quite. I’m hunting wumors.’

It's a difficult career, and the fact is that no matter what channels you use no-one will ever publish any of your work, give you any tips, or help you if you get hit by a bus. But if you are willing to try anything, here are some more unique ways to get your foot in the door.

1. Don’t. Most people are not meant for Freelance Journalism the same way that most people are not meant to be parents. Just because lots of people attempt it doesn’t make them any good.
   
   
2. Hang around post-boxes and steal the post of anyone who looks like a writer. Claim their ideas, and postage stamps, as your own.
   
   
3. Walk around with a ‘Press’ card stuck into your hat band.
   
   
4. Get a gimmick. Write ‘and that’s not how Monkeys do it’ in every article you pen.
   
   
5. Get a Dictaphone and secretly record your friends’ conversations. Type up the transcripts and use them to expose your friends as communists. This won’t help you get a job as a Freelance Journalist, it’s just something that needs to be done.
   
   
6. Start a rumour that Mel Gibson experienced priestly child abuse.
   
   
7. Find a celebrity who lives near you and begin stalking them. When they ask you to stop, complain that they’re elitist, arrogant and rude. Call up the tabloids to complain.
   
   
8. Write about Princess Diana. This is almost always universally publishable.
   
   
9. Stage a hunger strike until the local papers publish your article.
   
   
10. Have an affair with some Communist Prostitutes and send an exposé on yourself to the tabloids.

Finally, do your research. Not all publications publish or want the same thing. Read things before you write to them. That way, for example, you may realise that not every blog with ‘Freelance’ in the title is about freelance journalism.

Hope this helps.

Marcus

Don't forget to ask the Guru your Questions.
If you like these pearls of wisdom subscribe to the feed

• Why do birds always poop on my Car
• 8 Ways to keep it real after winning the lottery
  
• Who or what is the Freelance Guru
  

9 Reasons to be Afraid in 2012

As 2012 approaches, rumours are emerging of it's disastrous consequences. Frankly, I'm getting bored of panicked pilgrims, so here, in no particular order, are the actual 9 major tragedies of 2012.

1. We will all have to live through another Presidential Election.


2. Asteroid 334-Eros will pass within 17 million miles of Earth, If it earth were the corner pocket this is the equivalent of bouncing off the cushion and hitting the cat. Nonetheless, astronomers will get very excited and run to their observatories, leaving their families to fend for themselves.


3. US troops will hand back control of the Korean Military. Congress will declare a war to keep the troops busy.


4. The Freedom Tower will be completed in New York causing the terror threat to be raised just in-case some terrorist somewhere tries something with it at sometime.


5. There will be an annular Solar Eclipse - for 3 whole minutes hundreds of people will be unable to see where they left their keys.


6. The UK will turn off analogue broadcasting; millions of pensioners will miss Countdown. Mass rioting will ensue, albeit it very slowly.


7. The Sun’s magnetic poles will flip; it's inhabitants will get briefly lost when their compasses start pointing backwards.


8. The Mayan calendar will roll over from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0. The Mayans will have to buy a new calendar. They will also have one hell of a New Year celebration. There is no evidence to suggest the Mayans believed the world would end when their calendar did, although possibly they were worried that their computer clocks would reset to 0.0.0.0.1.


9. The Earth's population will excel 7 billion people, making it impossible to find a free parking space

That's it! Nothing else to worry about. Now please, Panicking Pilgrims, stop bugging me!

Oh, and don't forget to leave some change in the bowl on the way out...

Thanks to Skeptoid.com for inspiring this post

Anything I missed? Share your wisdom - Comment
Have you subscribed to the Freelance Guru Feed yet?

Other Skeptical Posts
• The pointless Pursuit of Happiness
  
• McDonalds Gets Feng Shui-ed
  
• Highly unpractical Evangelism

Helping Stacey Come

Dear Guru

Will Stacey be allowed to come tommorrow?

Darrenshine

What is stopping Stacey coming I wonder? Does she have an overly strict mother? A selfish lover? Is she forced to stay at home and cook for the children?

Does Stacey trust you? She may not want to come if she feels nervous around you. When I feel anxious, I talk to my stuffed snake, Luke. Maybe you have a stuffed snake Stacey can talk too? Maybe stroking your snake will help her feel more relaxed about coming? Try to find an average sized snake however as most woman feel intimated by very big ones.

Perhaps Stacey is agoraphobic? Does she panic when she opens the door and sees how far away the horizon is? If so this would be why she cannot come as she cannot leave her house, and it may be necessary for you to come to her instead. Blinkering Stacey may help here! A riding crop may be needed however to make her come and keep her focused.

Maybe Stacey believes coming will send the wrong message. A woman must be careful, at least until marriage, after which she will probably never come when you want her to again. If she feels she can trust you she will come eventually. Treat her to some wine, this has encouraged many women to come before.

If however, it is Stacey’s mother stopping her from coming, more drastic measures are required. Engage all your charm by letting her mother come first. By giving her mother this honour and letting her come before her daughter she will be able to see you are a caring, non-threatening, morally erect gentlemen, and Stacey will be allowed to come before you know it. As an added bonus, this 'let them come first' technique works on fathers and husbands too.

Hope this helps.

Marcus

The Guru has the Answers. Click here to ask the question.

• Why do ducks sleep on one leg?
  
• Why do we link red to Love and Anger?
  
• Why do we ask Alright?
  
• All Guru Questions

Love, Anger and Communism

Dear Guru

We use colour to show ones emotions - then please explain why the colour red is used for two opposite emotions - anger and love?

** Just Wondering **

Colours are overrated. You've seen one sunset you've seen them all, especially when viewed from an elevation of 15 foot. But humans are obsessed with colours, attaching them to everything from 'Blue Mondays' to 'Orange Wednesdays', and now, due to colour overuse, we've run out.

There are more colours in existence than the non-enlightened mind can imagine, but most of them don’t have names yet. The average pilgrim can’t even name the 120 colours of crayola, yet alone the 4x10⁹ colours available on the average monitor. As such, as soon as we get beyond 'pale peach' and 'Midnight blue', we have to resort to ‘A little bit lighter than “Fuzzy-Wuzzy Brown”’ and the whole thing becomes ridiculous. The only other option is to use Hexadecimal, but, somehow, telling your sweetheart ‘their eyes are of the deepest #DEA681’ isn't quite the same.

To solve this, we assigned colours ‘themes’. For example, Black came to signify death, green, nature, and Yellow, vomit.

Red, being a hot colour, is used for things that make us passionately hot under the collar, such as love, anger or third-degree sunburn. It reminds us both of danger (such as my wife’s angry face) and of romance (such as the petite lingerie of next-door-but-one), and easily encompasses both Love and Anger as varying expressions of passion.

It may interest you to know that red stands for far more than just kisses and slaps. It is the colour of power, war, warnings, fire, sin, guilt, sex, dwarfs, communism, and of course, the wiggly line under spelling mistakes in Microsoft word. For the latter reason, if nothing else, the colour red has made the world a much better place: I dread to think where the blogosphere would be without it.

Hope this helps.

Marcus

The Guru has the answer. Do you have the question?
NEW - Get the Guru by E-mail!

• Why do we ask Alright?
  
• Can we Find Ultimate Happiness
  
• Why Don't the German's speak proper English
  

Why do we say 'Alright'?

Dear Guru,

Why is it that people greet each other with "Alright" but don't actually answer the question? For example I walk into the office and see J, here's our conversation:

J: Alright
X: Alright
[End]
Please help me guru it is a conundrum that needs solving.

Xander

I envy the cordial greeting you enjoy! Most greetings sent my way begin, "What the," and end, "do you think you're doing?" Prophets are always despised in their own house, possibly because they're always meditating when it comes time to wash up.

This 'Alright' greeting is not as strange as you may think. As a country, we previously greeted each other by saying 'A hoy hoy!' After that, we tried asking 'How do you do?', but, as the appropriate answer was 'How do you do?', it formed a vicious greeting-cycle which trapped hundreds of innocent people for years. 'How do you do?' was finally scrapped in the early 1990' and 'Alright' took it's place. It has worked well for two reasons.

Firstly, being British, we despise the American trait of 'unnecessary talking', as exploited during any Oscar speech. For this reason, 'Alright' is both a question (Alright?) and an answer (Alright!), saving the effort of 'Are you' and 'Yes I'm' . With the added benefit that it needed to be said just once each, 'Alright?' allowed us to shorten conversations by several seconds, and go back to ignoring the other person much quicker than previously.

Secondly, when we ask 'Alright?', the responder understands that we don't actually want to know. 'Alright' is not supposed to be answered, or at least not answered honestly. It is the equivalent of 'Hello' and as such saves us from having to actually talk to people. It would be extremely awkward for any Brit if, on asking 'Alright?', they got the reply, "No! I can't make this months mortgage payment , my house is being repossessed, my wife is having an affair with the Milkman and the Window Cleaner, my back is killing me, I'm going blind, there's a rash around my third nipple, I'm chronically impotent, and my hamster died yesterday. Alright?"

In short, without 'Alright?' we'd spend so much time counselling each other that we'd never actually get any work done, causing the pound to weaken and the economy to collapse; before long there would be even more repossessions to moan about, and the vicious greeting-cycle would begin all over again. And one only need look at America's economy to see exactly where that would get us. Unnecessary talking costs lives. Alright?

Hope this Helps.

Marcus

Have you been seeking Wisdom? The guru has plenty to share.

• Can we find ultimate happiness?
  
• Why don't the Germans speak English?
  
• Did you used to be a Simon?
  

Why don't the Germans speak proper English?

Dear Guru,

I live here in Germany and can't help but wonder why it is that the Germans have a different word for practically everything over here. A different English word, I mean. They say "Handy" when they mean cell phone and "Talkshow" when they mean talk show, for instance. I've been told that you have lots of different words in your country, too (I'm an American), but I can understand you guys a whole lot better, usually. So like what is it with these Germans and their German English anyway?

Thanks, Clarsonimus.

Thank you for letting me know that you are American. As I want you to understand my reply I will type very slowly. It took me a while to find this answer, the infinite was not an expert on Languages and Luke is strictly a English snake. But thankfully, being all knowing, I merely needed to re-awaken my knowledge which I eventually achieved by searching Wikipedia and about.com. I hope you will consider all this effort when you pass the prayer bowl on the way out.

I do try not to pass blame; all in this world are equal, or at least all those who have not transcended to Guru Status. In this instance however, I cannot help it: This mixing of the 2 languages is your fault.

The merge happened after World War II largely due to English speakers, like yourself, migrating to Germany and hogging all the sun-beds, forcing the Germans to migrate elsewhere and hog the sun-beds there. As a result, and as English became the global business language, the two languages pooled, and, overtime, words like Workshop and Meeting crept into the German vocabulary. Germany welcomed the change. After the mess they'd made during World War II they pretty much had too.

It had the added benefit that the language became slightly camp, making Germans seem less threatening. For example, the word Handy, unique in Denglish, comes from a 1940 Motorola Walkie-talkie model, the Handie-talkie, and is possibly the least threatening word a German can use. The sight of a middle-age German man, frantically searching for his mobile phone and muttering ‘Wo ist mein Handy?', is enough to make a heterosexual male pluck his eyebrows and wear lycra for a month.

However, none of this explains why you can understand us English better than them Germans. This is because both the Americans and the English speak English, which is extremely helpful when it comes to communication. The Germans however, speak German.

Hope this helps

Marcus

Do you have a Question? Ask the Guru, he knows everything.

• Did you used to be a Simon?
• Why do we Celebrate Mothers' Day?
  
• All the 'Ask the Guru' Questions
  

Pilgrim's Identity Crisis

A un-enlightened soul has come to me.
Here is the knowledge they seek.

Dear Freelance Guru

Were you known as Simon?
You look like a Simon...

Pre-Enlightenment

Thank you for your question pilgrim.

Since starting this blog I have been surprised how many times I've been asked this question. It confuses me somewhat, because I had rather intended the Ask the Guru form to allow people to come to me seeking Wisdom, instead of causing me to have an identity crisis. But then, of course, thanks to my weeks of private devotions, I am never confused for long.

You state in you Question that I 'look like a Simon.' In order to affirm this, I searched 'Simon' on Google Images. These are the first 3 results.

Now then, exactly which of these 3 are you suggesting I look like?

The guru has the answers - Ask the Guru a Question

• Why do we celebrate Mothers day?


• Who will win the 2008 Elections?

Ask the Guru - Holiday Mum

Yet another weary traveller has made the arduous trek to my blog seeking wisdom. If they keep coming at this rate, I'm going to have to expand my pole to include a waiting room.

Dear Freelance Guru.

Why do we celebrate mothers' day? My boyfriend and I have a bet about it and it's beginning to get violent.

Relationship Issues

I just don’t get Mothers’ day. Motherhood isn’t an annual event, unless you’re a highly fertile Catholic. Having one day a year when you act more ‘motherly’ than the other 364 would normally result in a visit from Social Services.

It all started in Britain in the 16th Century as a day to visit your Mother-church, possibly to present status reports on the plans to conquer Earth. After the Civil War however, Anna Jarvis stole the idea for America, warping it to give servants a day off so they could annoy their mothers by hanging around the house. It’s interesting to note that 9 years later Miss Jarvis hated her holiday so much she rallied against it. Nowadays, Mothers day is little more than an excuse for Mothers to lie about while their kids run around doing a terrible job of the housework. Several other ‘special days’ have spun off from it, such as Fathers’ Day, Grandparents’ Day and Professional Administrators’ Day. Personally, I’ve been trying to publicize Guru Day - a day when I can stop being a guru and get off this pole. Weekends and bank holidays are just not enough…

But of course, mothers are blessed, they deserve a special day, and we should be thankful for them. I seldom see mine and I’m highly thankful for that. An elevation of 15 foot gives me plenty of time to turn on my iPod, close my eyes and pretend I can’t hear her shouting up at me. This is for her benefit as well as mine. She struggles to handle my infinite wisdom and, apparently, talking to me ‘exhausts her.’

And at her age, I feel it’s only right to let her rest.

Previous Posts - Who will win the 2008 Elections?

Are you seeking wisdom? The Guru has the answers.

Presidential Predictions

A seeker of truth has sought me for advice.

Dear Freelance Guru
Can you tell me who win the 2008 Election, preferably before they stop taking bets?

Congressional Gambler.

Thank you for your question, seeker of enlightenment.

You fail to mention which election you are interested in. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the results of the 2008 Bristol Book Club Elections. My money’s on Irene: her policy on multi-genre reviewing etiquette has made her quite a hit with the younger generation. Although, of course, I have evolved beyond the concept of wealth and no longer indulge in gambling. I always lose anyway.

I have been watching the American elections with great interest. It may surprise you to know that the average pole-based British hermit pays attention to such things, but it will affect me just as much as the rest of the free world. For one thing I wouldn’t understand the jokes on have ‘I Got News For You.’ And besides, if you want to get anywhere when conversing with the infinite, it helps to be up on gossip.

But if I had precognition, I would have gained my fortune by now thanks to a 12 season contract with Fox. As I don’t yet have my own prime time show, it is safe to assume I do not have the gift of foresight and can not confirm where best to place your bet. But it does seem to me, and Luke agrees, that the candidate to back is John McCain for 3 good reasons:

1. As for the mud-flinging Democrats, to quote the great Philosopher Sam Fox, ‘When two people mud wrestle, even the winner ends up covered in mud.’ America does not want a dirty President, unless, of course, they’re prepared to lie about it.
2. All who truly think America is ready for a black / female president raise your hand and say ‘Duuuuuuurrrrrrr!’
3. And finally, his name – ‘John Mc-Cain.’ Three strong, all-American syllables. Whereas, Hilary Clinton has the word ‘Clinton’ in it and Barack Obama sounds like a Al-Qaeda training camp.

Of course, by the time the primaries are over, John McCain may well be dead. But, based on recent history, the American public would probably still elect him anyway.

Hope this helps,
Blessings and peace be with you as you march towards enlightenment via the bookies on the corner.

Marcus
The Freelance Guru

Are you seeking wisdom? The Freelance Guru has the answers!