My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean…

So checking out the Mental Floss blog they had a recent post about second verses to famous songs you sung as a child. 

Everyone remembers:

My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
my Bonnie lies over the sea,
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
O bring back my Bonnie to me.

Chorus:
Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me, to me:
Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me.

Well that ain’t all.  According to the post the second verse (actually it is the third) goes:

Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamed that my Bonnie was dead.

OK…does he wish her dead or just assumed she was dead?  So further investigation I come across a site called ScoutSongs.com and lucky for you and me they had the whole song.  The further you go the creepier it gets.  I will now have nightmares. 

My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
my Bonnie lies over the sea,
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
O bring back my Bonnie to me.

Chorus:
Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me, to me:
Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me.

O blow ye winds over the ocean,
O blow ye winds over the sea.
O blow ye winds over the ocean,
And bring back my Bonnie to me.

Repeat chorus

Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamed that my Bonnie was dead.

Repeat chorus

The winds have blown over the ocean,
The winds have blown over the sea,
The winds have blown over the ocean,
And brought back my Bonnie to me.

Repeat chorus

My Bonnie leaned over the gas tank,
The height of its contents to see,
I lit a small match to assist her,
O Bring back my Bonnie to me.

Repeat chorus

Last night as I lay on my pillow,
Last night as I lay on my bed,
I stuck my feet out of the window,
In the morning the neighbors were dead.

Repeat chorus

My mother makes beer in the bathtub,
My father makes synthetic gin,
My sister makes fudge for a quarter,
Wouldja believe how the money rolls in?

Repeat chorus

My mother, she drowned in the bathtub,
My father, he died from his gin,
My sister choked on her chocolate,
My stars, what a fix I am in.

Repeat chorus

I tried making beer in the bathtub,
I tried making synthetic gin,
I tried making fudge for a living,
Now look at the shape that I’m in.

Maximizing Twitter and StumbleUpon

Last month I wrote an article for Webcomic Planet, so to ease back in from my much deserved and needed break, I thought I would repost it here.

Raise your hand if you use Twitter to announce when you have posted a new comic/cartoon.  Raise you hand if you also like to submit your new post to sites such as Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon.
 
If you are a user of Twitter and a registered user of StumbleUpon there is a great but little known tool at your disposal that you can submit a link to both sites at the same time.  When posting your comic’s URL to twitter you either have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or allow Twitter to shorten it for you.  Instead, I recommend using http://su.pr to shorten your URLs. 
 
Make sure you are signed into both Twitter and StumbleUpon.  Once you have posted your latest cartoon, go to su.pr and type in your tweet along with the full URL of the post.   Then hit submit.  Your post will be submitted to both sites. 
 
Here is what really makes it impactful.  Now when someone clicks on your link in twitter they will go to your post on StumbleUpon where they can not only view your cartoon but also give it a “Thumbs Up”.  The more “Thumbs Up” you get, drives potentially more visitors. 
 
Even better is that Su.pr has analytics of who retweeted your post.  If you are like me it can be difficult to determine if someone retweeted your post especially if they don’t use your twitter name.  With Su.pr, anytime they use the shortened URL in a tweet, it will show up on su.pr analytics who sent out the message.
 
Hopefully this is a tool that is useful to you and please if you see the SU header in a post and you like it, take the second and give it a thumbs up.  Your fellow cartoonists will appreciate it.  And as always you can find me on twitter at @bearmancartoons.

Love is…

…taking time out for real life.

Our friend YNB, Beano, The Bean, Just Jill over at the Elemental My Dear Blog has a challenge out to her readers to define what “Love Is’  Head over to her site and see who has answered the call but be prepared to bring a hankie as none are provided and several are needed.

She encouraged us to think of it in terms of our own style.  My style has always been not to follow the rules so I decided to talk about what Love ISN’T.

Love is not…relationships on the internet.  Sure there are those who meet, fall in love via the web and live happily ever after.  But if you have been working that route for 2+ years, I have to tell you, you need to do something else.  I spent my single days internet dating.  It was when I realized that route wasn’t working that I started spending those hours volunteering.  Meet new people, who introduce you to new people, who introduce you to the love of your life.  I repeat this constantly to single friends.  “If you always do what you have always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

Love is not…another visitor, another hit, another follower, another comment.  I am the worst about dashing home from work or dinner or wherever to see if I had a comment to respond to or got closer to a daily visit record.  That isn’t love, that is ego.  And I am all for ego stroking but there are times where it can get addictive.  I didn’t start this site to make money, I did it to share my work and hopefully make someone laugh once in a while.

So because that isn’t love, I have decided to take a break to refresh my real relationships.  I also have been slacking in doing volunteer work the last year so I want to explore opportunities to keep giving back.  So I am going to take a break for the next week and not get on my blog, not visit your blog.  No twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, reddit, etc etc etc.  It’s a time for me to refresh and renew the real relationships that I have in life with loved ones.

I had things lined up to post over the next week automatically but I pulled them all.  I can’t offer advice and then feed your habit of coming here 20x a day. haha  So nothing from me.  Some people might cry that that is the wrong thing to do to keep people coming back to your site and building your audience.  Screw that.  The people that care will be back.  And don’t worry, I will be all ready for some new ego stroking when I get back. 

Hope everyone has a safe Valentines Day (for those countries that celebrate) and take the time to go hug a real person.  Remember your computer doesn’t hug back.

What is wrong with America’s Funniest Home Video

I know that America exports many things around the world including television series.  I am not sure if the illustrious America’s Funniest Home Video is one of them.  Over here is has been on almost 20 years.  It is essentially a bunch of home videos of men falling off roofs, kids being chased by animals, old women falling at a wedding and other hilarious things.

The show is never destination television for me but when I find myself spending the day on the couch especially after staying up until 3AM cleaning up after a Halloween Party it seems one of those things I flip to.  Now I am not going to say I don’t enjoy the show because I do. I will never tire of a kid in boxing gloves hitting his dad square in the nuts.  I enjoy it at least up until the last 8 minutes of the show.  This is the time they announce the producers pick for the funniest three clips of the show that the studio audience will vote on to win $10,000.

Yet, in all my years of casually watching the show, the “producers” NEVER NEVER NEVER pick the funniest clips.  It’s always the staged things or crap that I am not sure why they find funny enough to have put it in the first 22 minutes.  If my gig with the Simpsons doesn’t work out, I would be happy to pick the top videos for the producers of AFV.