The Once-Great AJC Now. As a Word Cloud.

All words to make the cloud were pulled from AJC.com’s above-the-fold headlines at 1:01pm on Saturday, September 18, 2010. Click image to enlarge.

The Rise of the Big Media Three – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

I once made a ton of media at the beginnings of places like Kyte.tv and uStream and Vimeo and iReport. And strew that media around all over those places. Maybe others too I’ve forgotten all about by now. I was kinda surprised that some sites, such as Kyte.tv, are still going.

Honestly, now if it’s not Facebook, YouTube or Twitter (and my personal fave Twitter photo/vid upload app – TwitSnaps) I never even bother with tinkering around in the garages of other media sharing platforms.

With the rise of the Big Three I’ve gotten far less experimental, if at all, with the many other assorted media platforms out there. And that’s a pity, but it’s far more convenient to stay on three farms rather than dot the landscape with dozens of wee media sprinkles here and there that in a couple of years you forget all about.

I’m anxious now that I’ve always had, for reasons unknown, a superfluous two YouTube channels. And I stay awake thinking one day, soon, I simply must consolidate those into one. And then brand-out a separate corporate channel too. And be sure to put some Shout on that nice new skirt after that soy sauce spill. And the dog needs a flea med refill…

Oh woe is me. How the multimedia chores never end! What new media sharing platform are you liking that I should try to not ignore?

Mad Men, Mad Money, North Georgia

Oh victimhood. It sure doesn’t look pretty on our menfolk, eh? Worn like a hairshirt on our men of bigtime capitalist action plans? On our Georgia Republican leadership? Stuff just ain’t purty, any way you examine it. If you must.

Bernie Marcus popped-up on CNBC recently. In a bizarre, aging-capitalist ramble of a rant against the Obama Administration. The whole weirdness led… absolutely nowhere. And had nothing to do with the hardly-suffering Marcus himself, but was rather on behalf of a few whining, broke cronies. See here.

Yes, Bernie Marcus made a lot of people money. (I am one who stashed away a little of Bernie’s money myself… to see me through a divorce and single parenthood times. I am grateful to have had it, too.)

But the Home Depot folk who made the most money, the serious big bucks made by a handful of working class Joes who busted their butts right on up to a C suite at Depot, I Sarah Palin-betcha plenty of those people live in North Georgia right now. However, these far tougher times reveal that only a precious few could hold on to or manage their wealth… up there in North Georgia.

Been to North Georgia lately, folks? Someone called it PVC Nation. The entire landscape is moreorless bankrupt. Looks just like in the photo above. Nathan Deal is the human equivalent; now the North Georgia Wasteland poster child of greed and speculation, in boom times, gone wild.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Obama Administration or Tim Geithner or Nancy Pelosi or stimulus money or keeping hope alive. But it has everything to do with bad business practices much of North Georgia over-indulged in during the housing bubble of the mid-2000′s, like some crazed Big Mac bender.

Delighting and drooling in the boom housing times they willingly, gleefully lavished on themselves in a doomed river of (no doubt perceived as highly deserving) easy money. A mad, bank-driven, get-even-richer scheme of land speculation blessings – as if boom times and wacky lenders like the Community Bank (see link at bottom for more on Community Bank) were a prayed-for gift from Jesus Himself.

And dig me when I tell you kiddies, any money people made while working for Home Depot did not come easy;  it came from long years of hard work. But I diverge.

No one owes any of these whining types who are now whining to the heavens over their cash flow issues, such as Proxy Man Marcus, a guarantee of boom times and rivers of cash from any bank on any corner. (Again, Marcus is hardly suffering, but rather whining like a nutter on behalf of a few buddies he flew around in his Gulfstream last week. Go figure.)

See Bernie whine on their behalf.

What I want to know is where in the world did they ever get off thinking a wild profit and forever-good times were a right they were granted for the sheer good luck of having been born a white businessman in America? Huh? That one just makes me scratch my head in bewilderment.

Stick with ‘em long enough though, and eventually they all get around to blaming their white men-woes not just on the Obama Administration but also on that tried and true evil – The Media. Nathan Deal’s already launched that worn-out whine.

More on the matter of North Georgia repercussions here. It is the stuff novels are born from.