Happy Anniversary To Me!

Edition #50 — November 8, 2003

50 Newsletters And Counting

Hey there Realitycheckers — it's time to celebrate! After all, this is my 50th newsletter. Let us dance, feast, and make merry! [imagine me a full-bearded barbarian in animal pelts waving a big roasted turkey leg in the air. "More wine, wench!"]

OK, all delusions aside, I've cranked out 50 of these newsletters since November 1999, and heck — some have even been insightful. But they've also become sort of an addiction for me, especially since I don't have a girlfriend right now, which forces me to supplement my attention deficit with alternative sources of emotional nourishment. It's probably a good thing since many of my formerly free-spirited single male friends seem to have fallen off the face of the earth ever since they "hooked up". That could mean that if I find someone besides myself to fall deeply in love with then this whole free monthly newsletter thing could be in jeopardy.

But for now at least, there seems to be no such imminent threat to my personal newsletter empire.

The News Is Always Greener On The HTML side.

To begin the celebration, I'd like you to click >tHiS LiNk< to see what the new "full-featured" version of the Get Real Newsletter looks like. That's right — a newsletter makeover!

[enthusiastic applause and whooping]

Edit: what you are reading now is that full version.

The realitycheckers.com newsletter officially began as an "internet vending machine for Roland's thoughts" as I so eloquently put it in the first edition. So to mark the occasion of this, the 50th vending, I've changed the look and format from a text-based email to a graphics rich experience.

The new format, aside from allowing readers to interact directly with my website from a mail browser, will also allow me to include nude pictures of myself in future editions...

(Hey, what's so funny!!!)

The newsletter has now been officially baptised/exorcised as "GET REAL" and sports its own logo and graphic landscaping. The mailing list software I recently installed also offers many advanced options for both myself and my readers. I've even broken down and offered an "unsubscribe" option — although nobody seems to be taking the hint...

(I'm kidding, come back!)

Okay, I'm Not Kidding This Time!

Instead of just sending you the new graphics intensive newsletter format I've chosen to provide a link to it. This way you have the choice of viewing the new format outside and independent of your email software and its filters. If you like the format, you need to do nothing as your name will be part of a default list which will receive this new format beginning next month. However...

...should you decide that you don't want to receive this new format you can opt out of it and resubscribe to a text only version of the realitycheckers newsletter which will also be available. To help you, there is a link in the right hand menu bar of the new format entitled "Change Account". This will lead you through a simple set of instructions on how to opt in or out of either of the Get Real mailing lists.

I assure you the graphics version will be a lot more fun! There will, however, also be a copy of the newly formatted newsletter available in the Realitycheckers.com archives. You'll soon find all the necessary links on my homepage, which is also getting a major facelift and tummy tuck in preparation for a new romance with the future.

As for filtering: some webmail filters for spam will not allow you to receive newsletters with graphics in them. As such, you may have to choose the text version — which is still pretty good for the price... Depending upon your response to the new format, I may even just send out a simple page with an active link each month like this:

I will be experimenting to find which is the most efficient means of delivering a better reading experience to each and every one of my readers (both of you). This is definitely a good time for you folks to give me some creative feedback as to what you think about graphics-based email newsletters, what you think of the new format, etc. What are your personal preferences? Do you have restriction in place for receiving pictures? Let me know. You can email me from the newsletter via the "contact Roland" link on the right hand menu column. I'd especially encourage some of you single ladies to use that link, often.

(Ahhhh — to hell with newsletters anyway!)

I'm A Cowboy! (No I'm not!)

It's been a pretty busy week for me. Besides writing this newsletter, installing new mailing list software and learning how to use it, I also switched my web hosting over to a bigger company just two days before I had to leave for a gig in London (Ontario!) to play my last offical "summer" gig with the Rick Justice Band. (As you know, I've been filling in for the last bass player whom they were forced to kill because he simply "knew too much" for them to just let him walk... Drummer Jimmy "The Vice" Cruickshank later confided: "We had ta shoot 'im, otherwise he wouldn't ta learnt nuthin'!" Makes sense to me.)

[Oh yeah, I swear that most of this newsletter is true, so help me NIKE. You'll just have to guess where it best applies... Weeeeee!]

On a side note: I was actually close to going back out on the road with Rick again since he hadn't found a new bass player to kill yet. And with only two weeks left before their first scheduled US tour date, the clock she was 'a-tickin'. Given my plans however, I couldn't commit to "next Christmas". I wanted to be helpful — but not that helpful. Fortunately he found a willing candidate just in the nick of time.

I've really enjoyed playing these gigs with the guys again in the past two months. I've had a great time. In fact I especially had a great time this past weekend which brought yet another offer of a threesome to my humble, computer-shackled exile from "love" [cough, cough]. Two girls came up to me at the end of the night and basically laid out a bedtime strategy that would have had many a man's mouth watering. What did I do? Same thing I did when it happened to me in Cambridge two months ago: absolutely nothing. Sick, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong: I like naked women, especially in pairs, triads, or full chorus line. A threesome is definitely a long-running fantasy of mine — as with many men — but somehow when the situation presents itself to me (this is now the second time in two months and only the third in my entire life!) there's always something just a little "off" for my liking. It's kind of interesting though: the girl who put the sales rush on me I gave a nice hug and thanked her for the flattering compliments

(OK, maybe she was loaded and had cataracts — but still...)

Actually, she was quite sober, so I simply told her I'd been down this road too many times — groping random stranger's — and that my values had changed — and I had discovered self-respect. I was hoping she realized I was also including her in my moral scope. After all, what intimacy is there in bedding down a complete stranger, one who doesn't care for her in the least, romantically? Not much, from my experience.

Still, it's got me wondering if southern Ontario isn't becoming the "threesome district" of Canada. Maybe Tourism Canada can exploit this angle in their travel brochures...

Saturday was a packed house and there were a few more such "incidents" as mentioned above (singles, so it wasn't even worth mentioning — heehee, hoohoo!) as well as the usual hooting and hollering of a bar full of dancing, drinking souls having a good time. Bottom line: I parted with Rick's band on a high note — unlike last September when I was desperate to escape after a year and a half of the endless grind of touring the States up, down and sideways.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Rick for yet another wonderful opportunity to express my musical passion. I also want to wish the very best to Jim Cruickshank and Michael Leo, two important parts of the Rick Justice Band, as they head out to Wyoming next week. I'd especially like to wish young Dave, "the new guy", the best of luck as he'll soon be getting a crash course on how to fall asleep in a fully-equipped cement mixer.

You go, boy! [applause!]

Disrupting Computer Screens Everywhere

Now where was I? Oh yeah. This new newsletter format marks the first contraction of a brand new Realitycheckers.com website about to be birthed. Ideas about what I'd "eventually" like to do have been simmering for years now and are finally coming to fruition.

One idea whose time has come is my Realitycheckers Screensaver, which could be available as early as next month. There will be two versions of it: one a freeware download with 50 "reality checks" along with some blatant advertising; the other a "Super-Sized Mega Meal" version with 200 reality checks and no blatant advertising. Of course the latter version will cost millions, but subscribers to my mailing list will get a generous 0.1% discount. (I know, I know — I'm too kind. But that's just me...)

Both versions of the screensaver include some hilarious and insightful new reality checks for those who enjoyed my book, Reality Check, Second Thoughts On Everyday Life. Heck, even for those who didn't.

Last month I purchased all the necessary conversion software to make these screensavers accessible in every computer format known to humankind — except Glormzirph and Korbunkel 3000, both of which have yet to be invented. I'll be beta testing all formats soon and then releasing the screensaver software to the general public ASAP. I'm pretty excited about this project; I may scream. "Ahhhhh!"

[And there was much rejoicing throughout the land.]

A Brand New (TYPE) Face

All humility aside, I've designed what may arguably be the world's coolest logo for the Realitycheckers website; and if you disagree, hey - go subscribe to coca-cola's newsletter and see if they talk about threesomes in their newsletter!

[sound of crickets chirping]

Oh yeah — the logo, that's right. Well, you'll be seeing more of the little fellow as my website develops. "He" shows up in miniature at the top right of this newsletter. That is, if you clicked on the link at the beginning of this newsletter. If you're still reading this newsletter as a text only version, then don't be a:


(sorry, non-techies, inside joke)

What's Up, Doc?

I have many plans for Realitycheckers.com and many months of work ahead to implement them all. Having spent much of last winter writing and recording songs for my upcoming album, I've had to put all but my Realitycheckers newsletter on hold. But now is the time to move my web foot forward and you're seeing the early stirrings of a new momentum. By the way, I'm also hoping to put some of my songs online in early 2004; a little taste of the sonic feast I have planned.

edit: my frustration over browsers like IE Explorer's poor implementation of the conventions of CSS web code have caused me to delay all web-based design plans, including my screensavers and music section.

Anticipating a greater demand for increased file space and services in the future, I've signed on to a new hosting company in Santa Monica, California. Aside from keeping my web files warmer in the winter, they've also assured me that they had the necessary band "width" to handle full frontal nude photos of me, taken after a year of wolfing down herbal penis enlargement supplements. On that note: sure, my back hurts and I tend to pass out when aroused, but the extra twenty inches are well worth it...

(Hey, what's so funny!!!)

And speaking of endowment schemes: did anyone else get at least ten different offers this past week to invest millions of dollars for a cluster of unrelated presidential widows from war-torn African countries? Well, lucky me, I've contacted all of them and am now currently in possession of over $126,000,000 US dollars from people I don't even know. Life is good. The only problem is I've been emailing complete strangers all around the world in an effort to get their help in investing my share — and no one is responding. Go figure...

Getting plenty of email offers for threesomes though — wonder what's up with that?

And now, back to reality: Switching to the new "Cali" server and playing the London gig caused the mailout of this newletter to be delayed. It's only the second time I've had to break a clause from the "Secret Protocol of Realitycheckers Guidebook and Fishing Map", article 22, subsection C, paragraph 6:

"Send all newsletters out on the full moon — you big fat zorf!"

("Zorf" obviously means "high-ranking official" or "exalted one" in some forgotten language.)

Live Long And Prosper

Time — do you ever get the feeling that you need about maybe two or three more lifetimes worth just to do half of what you'd like to get done? I've got book manuscripts to publish, albums to record, web content to deliver, and God knows what all else that my unconscious mind hasn't even allowed me access to yet.

For me there's never a dull moment, or one without heartfelt inspiration. It's definitely a blessing to have constant purposeful motion in my life, but it also makes me wonder if I'll ever get to the finish line before the sand in my Roland-shaped hourglass runs out.

Ironically, deadening ambition is one of the reasons Tommy Chong, half of the once very successful Cheech and Chong team, sighted as his reason for still smoking pot after all these years. He himself has felt the futile disparity between his own endless ambitions and the limited time he has in which to fulfill them. His responce? He sparks up a big fat "gagger" to balance out this heavily-lopsided equation.

Damn, I knew I shouldn't have quit so hastily...

But hey — it's all good. There have been many times in my life when I didn't know what to do next. Now, I just wonder where best to spend my time between a thousand great objectives. What I do know is that eventually, one day, I — this Roland guy — will have to end. Given what I know about human biology, that means I'll need at least another 300 years to really begin stirring things up round here.

And with that in mind, I guess I'd better get going. Now, if you'll please excuse me, I have some homework to do.

*Roland Kriewaldt — writer, musician, web developer.

(*Also cooks, washes dishes, repairs roofs, counsels felines and is the "garbage-to-the-curb man" on alternating Wednesdays.)


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