Too Big For My Britches

Technical issues, all day, every day this week! It started with a video call with my family, and my cousin informing me my Patch blog link doesn't come up at home. She lives in Panama (the country, not the beach up north) and she and others over there can't read about my antics. If they can't read it, then people in Germany can't read it, the guys in Afghanistan can't read it, shoot.

Then I received a return email from our very own St. Pete Patch editor, William Mansell, regarding the want to adapt my blog for different Patches in Pinellas County. His answer, emulate same post with an individual account where I want to be. Tedious. I reminded him I couldn't embed videos in the body of the posts. William (Will? Willy? We never got informal) said all it needed was a refresh to the page. You can look at “Grace Under Fire” and see the short code in full; even if you refresh all day, it's not showing the video. Argh.

I designed a music-centric post with the intention of embedding the videos related to the conversation I wanted to have with you. I logged into my YouTube channel, typed in one of the artists, and when I hit play, I got no audio. I noticed the speaker icon had an x beside it. Must've disabled it somehow, right? Checked my settings, visited the video manager, and there was a copyright issue. “Third party dispute,” was the phrase highlighted beside my video. To borrow from my friend Sonia's catalog, “What the WHAT!?” I clicked on it to read further, and some organization claimed to own the song I sang in the video. The random organization cited “We Was Crazy” as the infringed composition. Huh? The song I sang is “Crazy,” by Patsy Kline, written by Willie Nelson, recorded in 1961. I highly doubt “We Was Crazy” was rockin' the airwaves back then. Erroneous, erroneous claim! I shouted to my YouTube screen, and I prepared to dispute it formally, but trying to be time-sensitive, opted to just click Acknowledge and move on. The restoration of audability didn't occur til close to 6pm.

What a mess. I have a marketing distribution list, a Twitter account, a channel, a blog, scattered all over the 0s and 1s. Like the time I pulled on Gina's pants and they stopped below my big butt: I've grown too big for my britches. This is a good sign, growth means progress. It means interest in my art. So it's time to collect all these sources of information and put them in a clean, dynamic, global portal under the brand Von Simeon. I planked down the finski to register a domain name, and will use the rest of October to get it organized for ya. Until I say so, keep checking in here. If you'd like a direct announcement, please email vsenterprisesfl@gmail.com with the header “add to distribution.”