WHEN "REAL MEN" STOPS AND "MALE CHAUVINIST" BEGINS: To hear some of the more pathetic specimens of religiopolitical homophobia put it, one of the more obvious causes of one developing "homosexual tendencies" is a lack of "healthy respect for [one's] masculinity" in relation to Cultural Heritage and National Honour and Identity.

Preferably to be expressed in the form of "healthy conditioning" by the parental units in childhood, in particular the likes of wrestiling and other exercises designed to promote "healthy" masculine feelings; anything less risked the boy's "serious descent" into homosexuality, still to be regarded by Those Who Should Know Better as a Serious Aberration and Mental Disorder.

Your Correspondent, come to think of it, has to wonder if the real intention of promoting "healthy masculinity" by such means is to perpetuate male chauvinism and domination--and to excuse the same as "cultural heritage" in case one needs a proper defence. (As if "cultural heritage" really mattered as a serious issue when it came to the defence of masculinity.)

And it's enough to wonder if the so-called "real men" are really closer to male chauvinists expected to flaunt their chauvinism as a show of National and Cultural Honour and Identity--never mind that some of the more likely displays of male-chauvinist bonding under such warped circumstances (especially among the easily-influenced) include the likes of:

• Spending most of their time drinking beer and swapping obscene stories;
• Eating high-fat junk food;
• Spending too much time among the Dregs of Society, and in such haunts as they are known to frequent (including beer parlours, taverns, hunting parties, liquor stores and suchlike haunts of poor male role models generally);
• Wasting too much of their pay on liquor, lottery tickets (and unlikely to win anything of substance except refund prizes) and crude pornographic matter;
• Watching films and TV programmes featuring extreme ultraviolence (especially the gratuitous sort), unnecessary sexualisation of women and/or children, and dubious sport like NASCAR and so-called "professional wrestling;"
• Beating their wives without provocation or warning, usually as a precursor to the old actu coitus (reinforced with approriate threats as necessary);
• Frequently absenting himself from the house, without regard for wife or children, and with the wife getting rather worried to the point of paranoia about his spending too much time "with the boys" as if they were rather dangerous themselves; and
• Suggesting that the children get out of the house after breakfast on weekends and during school vacation periods, not to return home until just before the supper hour (and cooking up plenty of cheap excuses to explain in case the police start asking questions, with a likely referral to the Child Welfare).

And for this the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right wants men to remain all the more conscious of their masculinity to the point of overt chauvinism in the name of G-d and Country, if need be?

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WHY "SPAM" IS NEVER A GOOD WAY TO PROMOTE WEBSITES: For some reason or another, there are those who see search engines, site swaps, banner exchanges and other forms of website promotion as ineffective and, hence, poor value for money in attracting "quality" site traffic.

No doubt explaining why they would prefer that intending webmasters use "bulk e-mail marketing" (read: spamming) as the marketing tool of choice. The contention, no doubt, being that:

• everybody seems to have an e-mail address these days;
• everybody reads their e-mail @ least once a day; and
• ergo, it makes sense for webmasters to use "targeted bulk e-mail marketing" as a more cost-efficent way to attract the kind of website visitors they would like to see visiting, and to be sure of a fresher, timelier response besides.

The Reality, however, is that, apart from the weird and unwholesome sort of online business (e.g., "online pharmacies," "multi-level marketing" schemes, "work-from-home" offers and adult websites), "spam" is not all that those involved want you and me to believe, let alone their making it sound attractive in pathetically glowing terms, for more mainstream businesses. As a matter of fact, virtually every company in the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 250 choose not to use unsolicited bulk e-mail as part of their marketing mix, for fear of ailenating especially long-established customers and attracting complaints in certain quarters.

As if that weren't enough, the same unscrupulous elements--and others of that ilk--are starting to push the concept of "blog spam" as a way to market websites; here, the thinking is that, with so many blogging or otherwise reading weblogs every day, such could actually be an equally-effective way to attract website traffic as translates into value for money. (Such thinking is fatally flawed, IIBC: Virtually all the major blog hosts have adopted procedures which allow bloggers to restrict blogging access only to themselves, or to such as have a special invitation, the better to control "blog spam.")

There are better ways--more orthodox ways, even--of attracting attention to your website.

One such I have started using is Web CEO - ultimate software suite for Web site promotion; all it takes is a short download onto your PC to start analysing your website and submit such to the leading search engines and directories.

As well as analyse any keywords and meta tags you're using to more efficently prep your site for optimum results in attracting search engine traffic. 

And it's free, to boot. Just click the link above to see what Web CEO can do for you, or to download the free version onto your PC.

Another way I prefer: The old reliable letterposts--you just have to do it right to get the right results. Not to mention providing work to letter carriers, clerks and sorters, the whole lot within the Postal Service as is involved with handling mails as needs the work more than ever.

I also include a link in the signature line of my e-mails as a marketing tool.

So there are more efficent (and more orthodox) ways of attracting traffic to your weblog or site than "spam"--methinks "bulk e-mail marketing" amounts to nothing short of cheap lily-gilding concealing sinister intent.