This week, news summaries brought to you from around the globe…

A Manchester, England woman claims that ever since a bolt of lightning hit her laptop, she has been the recipient of a seemingly endless supply of ebooks. The incident, which occurred during an electrical storm in late spring of this year, sparked an avalanche of new email messages all instructing Fiona Hearth to download the latest product she ordered. However, the hobby farmer does not recall ever making such orders, “not in my right mind, anyway.” Fiona says, however, that she does download the ebooks even though she has little use for them personally because they all have such compelling titles. Her flash drive ebook library now takes up so much space in her tiny cottage that she has had to relocate her previously indoor cat outside. “On rainy days he just stands at the window, mewing,” she said, “but really, each of these books is unique and tells some bloody amazing secret that must be preserved for human history, so out he went!”

Fiona, a humanitarian at heart, says she intends to create a lending library made up of the ebooks, a move that is striking fear in the hearts of ebook authors everywhere who want every reader to pony up their $47. Meanwhile, the Fairy Tale Society is looking into this real-life “magic mill,” while a leading shopping cart system says there is a logical explanation behind all this, citing a glitch in their system. They are feverishly attempting to solve the problem in the face of mounting pressure from freaked-out Internet marketers.

Residents in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania say their famed groundhog, Phil, better watch more than his shadow. In fact, he should watch his back as his thunder is being stolen by a wayward duo of busy beavers who have descended upon the town. The pesky beavers have been spotted tenaciously building dams in several Internet marketers’ multiple streams of income and, apparently, the prolific little rodents think this is hilarious to boot. Observers say the oddball pair appears to consist of a highly sarcastic male ringleader and a female who appears too nice to really be building dams but who has a tell-tale glint in her eye as she does it.

Finally, did you know that there is a direct correlation between your Body Mass Index and your Keyword Density Index? The latest issue of Sedentary Health shows that if you stand in front of the refrigerator stuffing your face, the chances are that you’re just as likely to stuff the articles you market with meaningless keywords in the never-ending quest for perfect search engine optimization. Compulsive abuse of keywords is beginning to be recognized as a real medical problem, and treatment options, similar to twelve-step programs, are already receiving large government research grants.

photo: iStockphoto.com

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Whatever you do, don’t mention the word “elevator” to Slovakian immigrant Pantz Aleunz. The 39-year-old restaurant delivery man was recently trapped in one that was jam-packed with enthusiastic Internet marketers for a stifling, seemingly endless eleven hours.

The trouble began at the U-Sleep-Good Hotel in Las Vegas which had been chosen for an Internet marketing convention because of its elegant website photos that bore no resemblance at all to its real life bedbug-ridden rooms. Imagine! The usually virtual business folk actually got to mingle outside cyberspace and could suddenly see, touch and pinch their colleagues, which is another story we won’t go into at this moment. While they outwardly smiled and schmoozed, they wondered how the bozos in front of them could actually be the suave, perfectly groomed professionals they chatted with daily on the ‘Net. Had everyone sent assistants who pretended to be them, or could it be that the photos and bios on all those marketing websites had been faked?

Pantz had just delivered an order of his employer’s specialty of spiked smoothies-n-schnapps and split pea burgers to a room on the seventh floor and was headed for the lobby when his elevator began to lurch and pitch. Then the car stopped moving altogether and, after just a second of stunned silence among the passengers, began rocking and rolling in earnest.

“They wouldn’t stop! They were all pressed up against me, telling me how they were unique in some way and could help me in my business,” Pantz later tearfully recounted. The passengers consisted of Pantz, six Internet marketers and one virtual assistant whose pitch apparently was indeed delegated to her by her client. “At one point, some dame was telling me how I could use my culinary and travel expertise as a delivery man to write an instructional ebook that could sell for $47! I knew there was no kind of market for something as ridiculous as that, even in America. Do they think I just fell off the turnip truck? We don’t even have turnips in my country.”

The world, however, was tuned into Pantz’ panic as the cable news stations got hold of the horrific events unfolding in the hotel’s elevator. Even Pantz’ Slovakian countrymen were riveted to the “breaking news” which quickly became the top story, accompanied by its own dramatic soundtrack—elevator muzak.

“I couldn’t take anymore of this nonsense. There I was, hyperventilating inside an old paper bag that smelled of rancid split pea burgers, and these Internet marketers began to cluck their tongues at me when they found out I didn’t have a blog to be my ‘platform.’ What kind of Yankee freaks are these, I ask you?”

Engineers worked frantically at the scene, denying themselves even rest breaks, to free the beleaguered and besieged Pantz from the scene of doom. Finally fleeing the elevator after a mind-numbing eleven hours, Pantz muttered a few words in Slovakian which loosely translated to “Ay Chihuahua!”

U.S. government officials plan to study Pantz to see if his ordeal can somehow be applied to the interrogation of terror suspects both at home and abroad. The Internet marketers, meanwhile, were unfazed and plans are already underway for their next real life convocation at the hotel, which has already added to its website the words “As Seen on Global TV!”

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A controversial figure has emerged in the field of personal and business coaching, and it appears that he’s the antithesis of all that demanding profession stands for. He goes simply by the name of “Coach Potato,” hailing from Idaho—or so he says, anyway.

Coach Potato made an unobtrusive entry, via a weathered red pick-up truck, to our meeting. This was held in his choice of a ramshackle diner. The only hint that he was the latest sought-after celebrity in the coach-o-sphere could be found in a vanity license plate that read “HOTSPUD.”

On personal growth: Coach Potato adamantly advises folks to buck the current trend to “do the one thing that scares you.” “What’s wrong with staying in your comfort zone?” he asked. “I see people contemplating bungee cord jumping, extreme hang gliding, and taunting pious Internet marketers. Holy Moly, why would you want to do this? Don’t you know you could get seriously injured this way? Well, with the first two anyway.” Coach Potato suggests that if you must explore risk-taking behavior, just try substituting one comfort food for another, i.e., chicken pot pie one night and maybe some mac and cheese the other. “That should do the trick—and you’ll save fistfuls of cash by keeping your life insurance premiums down!” he says.

On passion: “What is going on with all this passion? Think about it. People make bad decisions ‘in the heat of passion.’ There are even ‘crimes of passion!’ Do you think a passionate state of being is exactly a good frame of mind to make sound choices about your business? Chew on that and that’s the kind of thing that will make you, like my friends in the South say, ‘wake up where you was.’”

Celebrity-fueled trends based on the thinnest of metaphysical concepts conveyed by the frankly-weird activity of channeling have not escaped the Potato’s critical eye(s) either: “Forget this Law of Attraction! It’s a convoluted bunch of airy-fairy malarkey. You want to know a real secret? Consider implementing this: the Law of Subtraction. It’s easy, it’s a one-step process instead of four, it’s no-cost and anyone can do it.”

What it is? “Now write this down,” Coach Potato instructed. I did. “Just subtract yourself from negative situations. Let me repeat that. Just subtract yourself from negative situations. That’s all. I guarantee you that your life will be easier and more pleasant, and—dang!—there’s some way in there where you’ll make more money, too.”

Coach Potato teaches his mentees via teleseminars and never in person. “Heck, the point to this stuff is you gotta do it at home and in your pajamas! Otherwise, there’s not much reason for doing it, is there?” Tele-programs typically last twelve weeks, but the Coach admits, “My manuals for weeks three through twelve are blank. People generally lose their momentum for any kind of coaching after the first teleseminar, though some can sustain it for two.” However, he does ship out all home study materials with the advice that students immediately place them on their bookshelves, “so you won’t waste time and it can start collecting dust right away.”

When asked about his common-sense approach and why it might appeal so widely to Americans, 30 percent of whom are obese and live in households that have the tv on for an average of eight hours a day, the Coach simply answered: “Common sense? Yeah, I got horse sense. None of this miniature-ass sense that the other gurus have.”

Finally, he views family and friends as ultimately more important than finances. “No matter what, you’ve got to keep those home fries burning,” he announced with a wink. With that, he put his cup of joe back down on the counter and quickly wiped his mouth with the edge of his flannel shirt, calling an end to the interview.

Now that’s a hot potato! Thanks, Coach Potato, and here’s to the next tele-program you whip up being a “mashing success!”

graphic: iStockphoto.com

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And now for a literary interlude…

For Philadelphia-based Internet marketing copywriter Gideon Pulver (“Pulverize Your Copy!”), perhaps it was the last “P.P.P.S.” that finally drove away the last of his readers.

Gideon awoke on that day as he had on any other day and sleepily checked his email, but little did he know that this day was going to be oh-so different. Apparently, his last remaining client had canned him. In his email box was a message the client had forwarded to him that had been written by an irate person on the client’s email list in response to a sales letter which Gideon’s copy had spawned.

“I am not your ‘friend,’ nor have I ever been, so please do not address me as such!” said the angry email. “I am TIRED of these long sales letters where I scroll down and down and down, never to find the price of the ‘proven system’ you are pushing among all the bolds, the italics, and the exclamation points!!! Worse yet, every letter has even more inane P.S’s and P.P.S.s than the last one!”

Gideon was crushed. What had he done wrong? Why, he knew his AIDA—Attention, Interest, Desire, Action—better than his ABCs. He could brainstorm problems and highlight the solutions that his well-paying clients offered faster than Madonna could break up a Yankee ballplayer’s marriage. And his calls to action were as irresistible as a motherlode of catnip was to, well, jonesing housecats.

Never one to dwell on his problems, Gideon staunchly moved on, checking the rest of his emails. Gideon became positively giddy to discover the announcement that a new Web site had launched: Such a Catch! dot com, the premiere dating service that catered to Internet marketers. No longer would he have to deal with the prospect of dating civilians who knew little about the lingo, let alone the complex and sophisticated world he lived in. Gideon took a brief moment to daydream, picturing himself with a curvaceous redhead, snuggling by a fireplace, lustfully whispering “Ka-ching! Ka-ching!” to each other. He happily sighed. Gideon promptly joined the membership site, paid an outrageous fee, and quickly filled out his profile, creating the user name “Mr. (Copy) Write.” Surely that would grab the attention of his very own Ms. Right!

The time came quickly when Gideon would meet his Such a Catch! match. He agreed to meet Carolyn—that was her name—at a neighborhood bar, which was bustling with an after-work crowd. Gideon currently had no job, but Carolyn did and it was the only time she could arrange to meet him. A petite brunette hurriedly walked in and sat down next to Gideon’s stool, introducing herself. It was Carolyn!

They had a few beers and things seemed to be going well until Gideon stopped finally talking about himself and Carolyn had the chance to interject that she was not a copywriter but was, instead, a copy editor of press releases. “I have to fix other people’s bad writing. Let me put it to you this way: being a copy editor is like being a psychic of doom. You see things other people don’t and you try to warn them but they will not listen. You know? A slash, not a dash! A slash, not a dash! If an organization’s proper name uses one and not the other, figure out which is right and use it; don’t use one and then, in the very next sentence, switch to the other like…I don’t know…someone who goes to a dance with one person and leaves with another. Won’t anyone listen to meeeeee?” Carolyn threw her head back and howled as Gideon instantly realized he was guilty of using incorrect and inconsistent slashes and dashes, and even more heinous offenses. With this insight, Gideon began to feel he was choking on the bile of his own poor self-editing and had to get out of the bar and into the street.

He walked quickly through a narrow alley, and the epiphany came just as surely as a magnificent Technicolor sunrise lit up the city of Philadelphia. Just how long were Gideon and Carolyn in that bar? That’s not important; what’s important is that, as Gideon walked towards the light, he suddenly felt lighter, aye, it was as if he even lost some physical weight in the process. He knew deep in his bones that the life of an Internet marketing copywriter was not for him. All those rules, all those crazy editors who he knew should be correcting his commas and quotation marks but didn’t because no one ever had the foresight to use editors, all those ungrateful clients depending on him to sell their useless solutions to problems that don’t really exist—that was not the real Gideon! No! He would…he would become an experimental haiku poet! And move to Omaha, Nebraska, which, according to a magazine he had just read, had become populated with hipsters. He could see himself now performing at open mics wearing jaunty black berets. Women would buy him drinks and hope he was an emotionally distraught artiste who would immortalize them in words.

Gideon composed his first haiku on the spot:

Listen up, you noobs:
Internet marketing sucks!
Omaha awaits.

Disclaimer: Real News’ copy editor Carolyn is happily married and was never in a Philadelphia bar with Gideon. The incorrect and inconsistent slashes and dashes are all too real, however, and bug her to this day. She does not know how she ended up in this story.

graphics: iStockphoto.com

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If Marty Browman had it all to do over again, he surely never would have embarked on his fateful trip to Finland. He knew that Finland is a small Scandinavian country with a population of approximately 5 million who are legendary for their shyness, reserve, and love of raw salmon. What he didn’t know was that behind Finland’s fairy tale exterior lies a land just waiting to gobble up the likes of unwary Internet marketers like trolls hunting tasty goats who cross their bridge.

Browman, who owns an e-commerce site selling what can only be described as face spackle for wrinkled women, was advised by his life coach to make a list of the 100 things he would like to accomplish before he died. Browman impulsively put “visiting Finland” on his list, an adrenaline-fueled choice caused by watching a giant slalom/herring race during the most recent Winter Olympics. Deciding that vicarious living was not enough for him and urged by his life coach to “push outside your comfort zone and find your happy place!,” he set out on his journey.

He should have noticed that, of his 5,000 close and personal friends on Facebook, very few represented the Scandinavian countries and even fewer accepted his plan to “hook up and drink up!” with them once arriving north. He sent boastful e-mails to the Baltic region chockfull of testimonials from freakish-looking women with unnaturally stretched faces announcing his very special “Sparkle with Spackle!” boot camp, but these resulted in zero registrations. Oh, the folly of poor bereft Marty! Had he researched Finland first before taking his trip, he would have learned that the Finns are more likely to indulge in self-effacement than facelifts, and that’s a fact.

Aside from one wild night spent drinking moonshine vodka with the locals of a rural town—a stop-over on the way to Lapland, a province of Finland—and dancing the humppa with great abandon, our Marty was not having a very good time. Finally, once in Lapland, a very old and wise reindeer herder stopped his trancelike singing, or yoiking, long enough to extol to Marty:

“Let me explain something to you—and this is an absolute truth. In Finland, a man looks at his shoes when speaking with a friend. After 20 years, while talking with his friend, he will then look at his friend’s shoes.”

Marty realized the verity of this statement and that if everyone was looking at shoes, no one would be looking at faces and so, who would care to buy his “product”? Was this smarmy swami of spackle going to renounce his pushy ways or simply book the first flight out of this god-forsaken no-prospects land? One will never know; Marty was last seen walking through the forest on his way to the sauna and was never seen or heard from again. Whether he evaporated from the intense heat of the sauna or was simply carried away by the strong Arctic winds remains a mystery. All that is known is that in the dark of the icy winter, at the time of the aurora borealis, the northern lights flash an eerie fluorescent green; legend has it that this is Marty, who has returned to share a sad goodbye with all his Internet marketer friends.

graphics: iStockphoto.com

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A colossal battle between good and evil was recently waged in the guise of a seemingly-ordinary Internet marketing teleconference call. Unbeknownst to the trusting and innocent souls on the earthly end of the telephone line, the call was none other than a Hotline to Hell!

Fifteen hundred eager participants, most of whom were new to the industry, signed up for the innocuously-titled teleclass, The Secret That All Successful Internet Marketers Know. But, when the callers dialed in as instructed on the unseasonably scorching June day, many instantly suspected that this call was somehow different from what had been advertised.

Instead of being greeted with the usual peppy chitchat, callers heard a growling male voice that immediately began insulting their maternal lineages with a series of “Yo’ Mama” jokes. The least offensive of these was “Yo’ mama is so poor, she had to put a Big Mac® on layaway.” And this was just the beginning.

“The host of the call identified himself as Satan, and launched into a description of his affiliate program, which, he claimed, has been around for centuries,” said ear-witness Jorge Faust. “Apparently, becoming Satan’s affiliate is the secret that all successful Internet marketers know!”

In keeping with the new trend of dubbing call participants “fans”—whether they are indeed devotees of the host or not—a few hundred of Satan’s “fans” anxiously wanted to opt-in despite the chilling warning that there was no way to “unsubscribe.”

In addition, Satan began to push his own Evil Mastermind group, which was divided into two levels, Upper and Lower, or more popularly, Gold and Filthy Lucre.

Just then…

Excuse me. I had to get a glass of iced tea, as it is getting rather steamy in here. Now, where was I? Okay. Just then, a huge burst of static interference —or, some might say, Divine Intervention—appeared out of nowhere, effectively muting out the dastardly URL Satan gave to his would-be minions. Heavenly music of the spheres blasted across the bridge line before the participants were violently dropped out of the call. Satan himself commanded his fans to call back in but at this point he sounded more like he was on a cell phone breaking up than speaking from the underworld landline he was, in fact, using. Faithful followers who did attempt to dial back in were—and still are to this very day, and may be for all eternity—perpetually greeted with a busy signal.

But that was not the end of the supernatural, angelic goings-on.

Dante Weinstein, of Brooklyn, New York, had signed up for the now-infamous call but missed it due to emergency dental surgery. “I received an email with the link for the mp3 file a few days later,” he said. As was his wont, he listened to the demonic download backwards. “I was shocked that, instead of being given fiendish marketing orders, I heard a sweet, heavenly voice suggesting I might like to join the Peace Corps.”

Of course, the pitchforked powers of evil never sleep, and according to an unnamed source, it is reported that Satan is now moving on to Webinars.

graphic: iStockphoto.com

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Brand Carolyn Lee Boyd a fool, but the New England author adamantly refuses to charge anything for the download of her new ebook, citing reasons of both practicality and uncontrollable uppity integrity. Real News sat down with this frankly stubborn and “slightly” bizarre woman and had the following totally unbelievable conversation:

Q: Carolyn, you are offering your novel as a free download. Why not charge something, ideally ending in the number 7, for it?

A: Well, I can look at my market in one of two ways. First, I can assume that out of the 6 billion people on earth, at LEAST 100,000 (or 1 out of 60,000, I mean, 1 out of 60,000) are chomping at the bit to read my book. At least 30,000 of them will be on the Internet and immediately find my site because there is nothing to stop them as I registered with all the major search engines. Then, they will each happily plunk down, say, $47 for the book, making me $1,400,000.

Or, I can think of it this way: my site is one of more than 100 million on the web, so that the chances of anyone both finding the site and wanting to pay $47, or about four times what a novel costs in a bookstore, for my book are slim. Maybe five will actually buy it, which would make me $235. It will cost me, say, $1000 to pay a virtual assistant to set up the snazzy site and shopping cart system and $100 a month to maintain it, so, after a year I am out about $2000. Oh wait, it will cost another $100 for my accountant to do a schedule C to report the $235, so that’s $2100 I’ve lost. So, my VA, God bless her/him, and my accountant will make money off this charging-for-my-ebook-business while I lose money. Being unrelentingly realistic, I tend to think the latter is more likely. Plus, I don’t need the money.

Q: That’s right. Unlike most Internet marketers, you have a salaried job. Don’t you go around helping old people or something?

A: Yes, I run an agency which assists elderly people to stay safely and independently in their homes. Last month I tried desperately to take a job that would have halved my salary, putting me at just about subsistence level, and in which I could tackle global human rights issues. But, they didn’t want me, so I am still stuck firmly in the middle-class, gosh darn it.

Q: Whatever floats your boat. And the novel – which is called Temple of the Subway Goddess – there’s some kind of woo-woo premise to this book?

A: It is about everyone valuing the sacred within themselves and each other. At the end, the two main characters find happiness by giving up their professional jobs to help build this community temple in a ravaged urban neighborhood. That’s another reason I offer it for free. It illustrates the point that you should do what gives your life meaning – and having people read the book gives me joy – whether it’s paid or unpaid, while benefiting rather than exploiting others along the way.

Q: Okay! So someone downloads your free ebook - here’s a good place to give us your link, Carolyn…

A: Oh! You can download the book by clicking here now.

Q: Good! Now — someone downloads your free ebook. What’s the upsell?

A: What’s an upsell? Doesn’t that have something to do with the Marketing Funnel to Eternal Damnation?

Q: Okay! We’ve had enough of you now. Thanks Carolyn! Next week: Real News readers will learn how an ordinary marketing teleconference call turned into a hotline to hell.

(Full Disclosure: The link to “Subway Goddess” is a real link to a real book and the zany plot is just as she says. Carolyn Lee Boyd is the lovely volunteer copy editor for Real News stories.)

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