A great way to earn money is by offering good taste to masses of people. I’m actually talking about the Deck, the ad network for Web sites that hate ads: One ad per page, appearing only on sites Jim Coudal knows and likes, billed at premium rates. If I am running the numbers correctly, Gruber alone, with his four million monthly pageviews, grosses a quarter-mil a year from ads via the Deck. (Merely an unconfirmed estimate. [I asked; he didn’t answer.] I am quite sure the order of magnitude is correct.)

But those are all blogs for Apple fans and users. Taste is something they already have. If any sector needed a hot-taste injection, it’s the demimonde of gay blogs. Each and every one of them is atrociously coded, typeset, copy-edited, and designed (none actually have “design”), and only a couple are viable, namely those of Andy Towle and that grizzled positoid. All of them are festooned with ads that cause various sorts of trouble, like presenting not-safe-for-work images on seemingly unrelated stories from the paid work of legitimate journalists. They all look like shit, and the grizzled positoid’s site crashes your browser so much he has to keep advising people to upgrade. Joe Jervis, menace to society.

But the grizzled positoid’s site hits about three million pageviews a month, if I recall a posting I can now no longer find, with zero hosting costs because he runs it through Blogspot. Now imagine the improvements to be had if somebody invented a full-on Deck clone just for gay blogs. Obviously we’d call it the Dick network.

• Gay blogs could actually be designed for the first time ever, and would feature exactly one ad at a time, which in turn would never be a shock to the senses.

• Blog owners could quite possibly earn more money than they do now, particularly since they’re dealing with exactly one ad provider. Or, if they earn slightly less, they at least are running blogs that do not repel readers and impair their equipment.

This would require a commitment to doing what actually works instead of what doesn’t work, a commitment few are willing to make. It requires, further, a commitment to user experience and design, at both of which are atrocious. And it requires gay-blog proprietors with taste, of which there are none.

I believe the name for this is “leaving money on the table.”

What do gay blogs look like with their “content” removed – showing only chrome and ads, in other words? They look as good as you’d expect.

By coïncidence, Oxford University Press Canada fired its dictionary staff right after I released my E-book about Canadian English spelling. This was the division that accomplished the unprecedented feat of keeping a dictionary on the best-seller list for years, with 400,000 copies sold. We were told that Oxford U.S. would handle things from now on – which means Jesse Sheidlower, who I suspect would never suggest he actually knows anything about Canadian English.

Then we have Sara Hawker, a first-class imperialist and second-rate lexicographer. Writing on the official OED blog, she has the temerity to claim:

In all but American English, it doesn’t matter which spelling convention is chosen: neither is right or wrong, and neither is “more right” than the other. The important thing is that, whichever form you choose, you should use it consistently within a piece of writing.

What’s she talking about? Verbs ending in ‑ize or ‑ise. (She leaves out ‑yze or ‑yse, as most such discussions do.)

I expect nothing but thoroughness and unimpeachable correctness from Oxford. Here we have neither. To educate Hawker:

• There are three spelling traditions in English, namely American, Canadian, and British. Every country that isn’t Canada or the U.S. uses British. (Go ahead – check.)

• In Canadian English, there is only one right way to write these verbs, and it’s the American model of ‑ize/‑yze. One way very much is “more right” than the other. British verb endings are wrong here.

• You can’t pick and choose your endings in the U.S. or in Canada.

In retrospect I should have expected this kind of ass‑ or arse-backwards error given that the OED site lets you search “U.S. English” or “World English,” as though those were the only options. There actually are three, and they don’t go by those names.

Hawker had about a week to get back to my E-mail on this topic but didn’t. Jesse Sheidlower wouldn’t parade his ignorance like this, would he?

TTC’s advertising contract, currently held by CBS, is up for renewal (PDF). What’s in it?

This is how the TTC gets privatized

Explicitly not covered by this contract are a list of “New Advertising Technologies and Programs” for which the winning bidder may separately apply. The full list, which the contract suggests is not exhaustive:

• 3D LCD screens
• Digital kings (not defined)
• Information kiosks
• Subway-line naming rights
• Subway-station naming rights
• Subway-car video screens
• “[S]ubway stations modernization/improvement projects funded by advertising revenue”

Whole-vehicle ads

• “Whole-vehicle or vehicle-mural advertising” can include up to 20 vehicles at a time (of which all can be streetcars), though 30 more buses and/or streetcars can be in process. If they cover only one side, it’s the driver’s. Only the TTC chooses the actual vehicles.

  An ambiguous paragraph appears to give the winning bidder the right to request more vehicles for this kind of full-vehicle advertising.

• If your decals cause damage to vehicle paint, TTC may bill you at least $25,000 to fix it.

• Vehicles covered in ads operate from dawn to dusk only.

• Up to 24 subway cars can be wrapped (sides and top, but not the windows).

Where else can they advertise?

• On ceiling decals in the insides of buses.

• In station-domination campaigns at Union, Eglinton, St. George, and Finch

• On “subway-station stair risers, metal, columns, walls, turnstiles, and the bottom[s] of Collector Booth’s [sic] in stations that are not part of the ‘Station Domination’ program.”

• They can cover an unlimited number of “bus backs.”

• Ads can encroach onto windows on any number of vehicles.

Yes, there are billboards

Outdoor ads, “in the form of advertising signs, billboards[,] and displays at TTC properties such as commuter lots, garages, carhouses, and yards,” are part of the contract.

This is where your information screens are coming from

The Company will be required…[,] during the term of the Agreement, to install digital units for the purpose of providing customer[-]service information messaging on Commission property. The Company will be allowed to advertise on these units through either various advertisements or the placement of a logo as directed by the Commission.

OneStop’s contract probably won’t be renewed

This Agreement does not include the right to advertise on the Platform Video Screens, Next[-]Vehicle[-]Arrival Screens[,] and Customer[-]Service Information Screens [that are] covered by a separate Contract with OneStop Media Group [that] is due to expire on June 30, 2020. When this Contract expires on June 30,2020, the programming, maintenance[,] and replacement of these screens will be included into this Agreement, subject to terms satisfactory to the TTC.

Yes, they can hand you a stick of Right Guard

When a Station is Dominated by “Station Domination” advertising, “[s]ampling products and event programs” (sic) are permitted. But they can also do that anywhere there’s vinyl advertising.

Where they can’t advertise

• On the PA system, via stop announcements, or on “fare media of any type or description.” The Avon and Runnymede loops and the Russell Carhouse. Timetables, maps, “servicechange bulletins, etc.” (sic).

• In any subway station or any other “transit facilities” opened after the end of 2011, which is interesting, to say the least.

What about the video billboard at Bloor station?

Not mentioned.

Look who’s back: Craig Morgan Teicher, the poet who thinks using E-books for poetry is an insurmountable problem. He still thinks that, and he’s still wrong.

I guess the chutzpah you need to get up there onstage and declaim your free verse at some sort of “slam” – are the kids still doing those, or did they die out when Nuyorican did? – transfers well to the online world. I say that because obviously Teicher has no compunctions about presenting himself as a fool and an ignoramus.

Based on the current post and the previous one, Teicher doesn’t understand markup, hasn’t bothered to learn, and continues to shriek like a milkmaid at the sight of a mouse when confronted with a wee bit of HTML.

E-book linebreaks and spacing are a solved problem for anyone who knows what they’re doing. What Teicher considers a “swamp” of code, which “[b]asically” has to be done by “hand,” the rest of us call “markup.” Maybe he thinks a manual transmission is too much work, too. To some people, I suppose.

This flighty technical ignoramus now has flighty-technical-ignoramus friends, according to his current post. They too need to learn that PDF is not necessary in order to typeset poetry.

Why would an august periodical like Publishers Weekly allow a writer to embarrass himself this way? More than once, no less? Another lesson I draw from this is that nobody at that august periodical has the slightest technical skill, either.

Kooky fun fact! I have personally declaimed poetry onstage while wearing a Mighty Mouse T-shirt.

Simon Doonan:

What are the biggest career hurdles that you’ve had to overcome?

I never really thought about it in those terms. I went into retail and specifically window display. There were plenty of gay people in those professions and gay people are identified with those professions, so it wasn’t like I went into a super-straight environment like sports or Wall Street and then had to sort of persuade everybody that I was competent. I went into a super-gay professional environment and just sort of threw myself at it creatively, and that bore fruit for me.

Has [being gay] ever played a role in your career?

Well, I think with my writing, which is part of what I do, sometimes people don’t take it seriously if they think that you’re gay. In the past, like when I got one of my books reviewed in the New York Times, the reviewer described me as foppish and superficial. I thought it was kind of funny at first, and then I realized he was reviewing me and not the book. I think that can happen if you’ve always been out. Because I’ve always been out, and sometimes people don’t take me so seriously. They’re more likely to take a gay woman seriously, whereas with a gay man they think, “Oh yeah, he’s probably creative or funny” or whatever. Maybe a lesbian is more likely to be thought of as having some kind of professional gravitas. […]

Incidentally, the fagnonomics research bears out at least the latter point: A small handful of studies have speculated that lesbians have better outcomes in male-dominated fields (where they are already overrepresented) because men feel they have masculine characteristics. By implication, lesbians are not viewed as Basic Instinct–style sexual conquistadoresses of the workplace.

The idea of surfing people’s opinions about me in a sort of random way or people’s speculations – I don’t think that’s a good key to success. I think there are people totally distracted with Facebook and social media, and it is going to inhibit their success…. The culture of distraction and social media can be very corrosive. […]

Go out and get a job in the store. It gets you out there where you meet other people…. Especially if you are feeling a bit marginal – if you’re a gay or transgender person who feels marginalized, in retail you’re not marginalized. I’ve said to so many people, “Why don’t you get a job at a store?” They look at me like I’m giving them some third-rate idea, and then I say, “Listen, I work in a store, and I’ve always worked in a store!”