Mad Mike, the homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight

Mike Wille was the homeless loner who enraptured legions with his funny and touching stories on The Ground Score blog. After his mother’s death, he inherited $1.8m and a house near New Orleans – so will new-found wealth alienate his fans?

Mike Wille in front of his new home in New Orleans. Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa

 

Michael Patrick Welch

Tuesday 24 March 2015 14.41 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 24 March 2015 23.45 GMT

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Missing the Austin ditch in which he’d slept most nights for the last two years, Mike Wille curled up on the front lawn of the large house his mother had just left him via her suicide note. Her death meant that Mike – known to fans of his street music and his homelessness blog, The Ground Score, as Mad Mike the Hippy Bum – would soon be a millionaire. Mad Mike worried that, given his love of drink and drugs, he could not survive such a lifestyle shift.
At birth, Mike’s left leg was shorter than his right by an inch, with no defined calf muscle and an under-formed foot sans big toe. When I visited his mother’s former home near New Orleans recently, he showed me a box of family papers he’d unearthed regarding the lengthening of his leg by the famous doctor Gavriil Ilizarov, who invented the procedure.
Still, the bum leg helped Mike nurture a negative outlook that, once he became teenager, fractured his relationship with his already volatile parents. “My mother was a fairly erratic person. Sometimes extremely benevolent and generous, other times scathingly cruel,” Mike told me. “When I was in the seventh grade, she tried to kill herself in front of me because I got a D in history and I said I didn’t care. Later we found her passed out in the garage with the car running and my dad freaked out, showing more emotion than I’d ever seen out of him.
“Things came to a head when I was 17 and had a fist fight with my dad, causing him to have me arrested. This was my first time in jail,” says Wille, who immediately moved out of his house. Mike has more recently written exquisitely about subsequent trips to jail (most for public intoxication) at The Ground Score:

Immediately upon entering, one of the prisoners, a skinny guy about my age, walked up to me, looked me in the eyes, extended his hand, and in a welcoming voice said, “Hi. My name is “John.” Now I knew I was in luck. Not only had I stumbled upon a harmonious pod, but also one which contained at least one smart inmate. If you ever go to jail, I recommend doing just what he did, and greet any unfamiliar inmate coming into your living space in exactly this way (almost any). You can learn a lot from a guy by presenting him with the option of civility.
I gave this gentlemen amongst the despondent a firm handshake and said, “Hey man. I’m Mike.” Over the next two nights I ate, slept, watched TV, read a book about Marlon Brando, and talked to John. A decent conversation is hard to find in jail, and I could tell he hadn’t had one in a while. As for me, it had probably been even longer. In this town, the only class of people less worthy of respect than prisoners, are the homeless.

Thanks to his blog, Mike received fan mail from Scotland, New Zealand, Latvia and the Ukraine. To a homeless bum, this meant everything.

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Wille, now 36, lived rough on the streets of Austin. Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa

Mike’s deceased mother’s house, a nicely appointed junior McMansion 45 minutes east of New Orleans, represents the first roof over Mike’s head in four years. Mad Mike spent the last 15 years blowing back and forth from Texas to his home state of Louisiana, surfing both couches and park benches.

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I met him in New Orleans where he played music in the French Quarter – songs like I Love the Devil and Money For Drugs, which he’d specially designed to make shocked tourists pause. “But after I got them to stop I’d get them to listen to a more substantial song,” Mike clarifies, “usually getting them to tip more money or buy an album in the process.”
Wille, now 36, first played music on the street in Austin at the age of 19, and he ended up spending his last two years in a ditch there because it does not snow and the attitude is fairly liberal. That, and there are drugs on the ground, everywhere. “The main reason Austin is such an ideal place for ground scoring is that it’s a college town with a heavy drinking culture. Drunk young people love to buy drugs, but they aren’t always the best at holding on to them,” Mike explains. “So not a day went by that I didn’t find a few nugs and a pack of cigarettes.”
Highly intelligent, Mike could probably hold a job despite his handicap. He was not, however, what they call in New Orleans a “fauxbeaux”— one of those grungy traveler kids who begs for change even though they have a safety net.
Mad Mike chose homelessness, feeling cast out from normal society. Since it was technically his choice, Mike held onto a strict rule against ever bothering anyone, even for a cigarette. “As a homeless person I always tried to be self-sufficient and not reliant on others,” he says. “Partly because I’d found in the past that others are not always all that reliable. Also, I don’t like it when strangers come up and ask me for things, and can only assume other people feel the same way.”
As a result, Mad Mike became a highly skilled scavenger. During an early trip to Houston, he found $700 atop a toilet paper dispenser in the bus stop bathroom. Another time he found what he estimated to be $500 worth of crack cocaine, which he intended to sell but instead smoked with his musical partner Ray Bong in a single evening. Soon after, he sniffed out a bottle of Dom Pérignon 2005 from behind a restaurant’s dumpster.
His mother gave him his first laptop. They’d reconciled somewhat in the years since Mike’s 48-year-old oilman father died of cancer in 2001, leaving his mom a rich widow. She and Mike occasionally bonded by getting drunk together, but most of these hang sessions devolved into brutal, raging arguments. She gifted him the computer, unaware that any drug Mike found, whether or not he recognized the plant or powder, Mike would ingest and write about on his blog.
Mike daily sat outside on the back steps of an Austin coffeeshop with Wi-Fi, blasting out touching and hilarious stories; as such, he possibly was the world’s first homeless blogger. His direct, pathos-driven diary entries smirked along with what most would consider an extremely rough life. Mad Mike’s economy of words and life of hardship even reminded some of Bukowski.
With his writing, he was able to provoke in readers an empathy for homelessness that most Americans do not regularly feel. And to accomplish that, he gave deeply of himself. “I mean, what did I have to lose by telling everybody everything about my life?” Mike asked me as he sat on the throne behind his brand new DW drum-kit, and lit a cigarette in what was once his mother’s living room.

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Mad Mike: ‘Facebook and my blog were forums where I wasn’t judged by my financial situation.’ Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa

Mad Mike still has not told the thousands of readers who keep up with The Ground Score that he is now a multi-millionaire; he fears they will judge him differently.
“People talk so much about how Facebook is garbage, and just some cheeseball thing you shouldn’t take seriously, but … Facebook and my blog were forums where I wasn’t judged by my financial situation,” says Mike. “In Austin, people were cold to me, people didn’t look me in the eye. Women didn’t look me in the eye for years. Police would put me in jail every chance they’d get. The internet was the perfect escape.”
His first computer was quickly stolen, along with his guitar during one of his blackouts on Austin’s world-famous 6th Street. He managed to continue writing within the two hours allotted by the public library’s computers. “I’d post something in one hour, then go back later in day to see how it was received. When I wanted to get more done in a day, I’d write it all out in longhand first.”
It is tough to corroborate the stories of a homeless loner. But I’ve shared just a few degrees of separation from Mike in real life for enough years to believe his Ground Score tales. “In real life, I was a heavy drinker who rubbed people the wrong way,” said Mike. “But I always thought that if everyone could understand what I was thinking they might understand me and like me better. So hitting it big on the internet validated my feelings on that.” Fans out of nowhere also helped him live: “I’m obviously some kind of big shot artist to these guys – but then I’d look away from the screen and remember that I’m a pariah. It helped me to survive under those conditions. I made light of it in my writing,” he says, “but life in the ditch was fucking rough.”
Mike finally went against his own rule and asked his internet followers if anyone had an extra laptop he could have. His next two computers and a smartphone came from readers. “It was an amazing thing, the moment I realized I would always have a computer, just so long as I kept writing …”
A university press even reached out and offered Mike a one-book contract – which I advised him not to take because I thought his writing could touch more people than a university press could reach. Having published a couple books with universities myself, I knew that route wouldn’t lift him out of the ditch. “Hold out,” I advised him. “You could make real money with your writing.”
Soon though, money wouldn’t be a problem for Mad Mike.

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Mike replaced his mom’s furniture with thousands of dollars worth of brand new musical equipment. Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa

“Three out of five of our siblings have committed suicide. Mike’s mother is the third,” says Danny Branighan, the arbiter of his sister’s will, though they’d been estranged since 2001. Danny has a turbulent relationship with his brother as well, and another sister who was so horrified to read Mike’s blog that she cut him off, and demanded he never write about her in even the most veiled of ways.
Danny’s most recently deceased sister had argued with her boyfriend, told him to leave the house, then went to sleep in the garage with the car running. “She had a will drawn up before that, but the one that she wrote that day was considered more valid, and it held up in Louisiana district court,” says Danny, who ever since has been giving Mad Mike rides and amateur legal advice. He confirms Mike will inherit $1.8m in investment money, plus his mother’s big house. “I’d have been upset if it all hadn’t gone to Mike,” he claims.
After the loss of his mother, Mike wasn’t heard from for weeks. When he resurfaced a month later, he told me that he was “very happy about the money, but I don’t like the way I got it. I wish she would have given me 10% of it and had a deeper relationship with me.”
Though still smoking weed and dabbling in other drugs – and worst of all, ripping the filters off his Pall Mall cigarettes – Mike is attempting to quit drinking. “I simply can’t afford to fuck this up, and if I’m drinking, I certainly would. Either I would waste all the money or kill myself,” he believes, pointing to his last drinking binge this past New Year’s Eve, when Danny ended up driving alcohol poisoned Mike to Tulane Hospital. “Abject poverty had kept my drinking reasonably contained,” says Mike, “but with a full bank account I tend to drink until I get sick.”
Instead, he’s indulging in music. Mad Mike immediately moved his mom’s sofa, love seat and ottoman out of the living room and replaced it with thousands of dollars worth of brand new, gorgeous musical equipment: a cherry wood Les Paul guitar and a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp; a giant, black Korg keyboard and a huge multi-channel Roland amp; a sleek, black Fender Jazz Bass; several microphones and the six-piece drum kit. As we sit around jamming, he tells me: “This morning off of eBay I ordered a $2,500 Martin acoustic guitar, a standup bass, a Deering maple Banjo, and an Irish Bouzouki Mandola.” I had to look that last one up.
He promises that now, after he buys his first car as an adult, and then helps Danny’s family pay off tens of thousands worth of debt, Mike will keep the rest of the money invested. “This looks like rash consumerism,” he recognizes, moving into the kitchen, which now serves as his recording studio’s control room. “But I am just acquiring the specific tools for my needs. I intend to spend the rest of my life writing, producing artwork, and recording music. I suppose I might even consider starting a family now that I have the resources to take care of one.”
Wanting me to try the weed he stashed out in the guesthouse, we must first cross his vast, verdant yard. The guesthouse is tiny but, with a bathroom, bed and TV, inheriting it alone would have wildly changed Mike’s life. Now, it is just another place Mike keeps weed.
I ask him if he’s worried people will treat him differently. “Oh yes, it happened immediately,” he says. “Now people invite me into their parlors, their guestrooms, they offer to let me sleep on their couch. Though this also has to do with the fact that I’m not drinking…”
Despite that he’s currently embroiled in something even more interesting than finding drugs on the ground, Mike hasn’t posted on The Ground Score since he moved in here. He did tell his followers that he’d inherited a nice house and is no longer homeless. But he fears the word “millionaire,” will alienate his fans. “They like an underdog,” he understands. “So I’m kind of nervous as to how they will react.”
He admits that the house is too distracting for blogging. “But more importantly, my family is now all really paying attention to my posts,” he says, blowing smoke in the breeze’s face. “And what I have to write about lately is stuff that would ... not offend them necessarily, but … they’re from a different lifestyle than me. To be honest I haven’t been writing because I finally care what someone thinks.”

 The original source of this post is http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/24/mad-mike-homeless-blogger-millionaire

I think this is an amazing story it is very sad but has a kind of ok ending.Things can turn out alright in the end of a very stormy life.

How To Increase Blog Traffic The Best Way With Blog Engage

As a blogger you will need an audience to share your talent and inspirations with.And if you want to earn from blogging you do need traffic and you will need lots of traffic.That is where Blog Engage comes in.What is Blog Engage? Blog Engage is an amazing community where like minded bloggers meet, submit their own posts, vote and comment with one another, hence the name Blog Engage.Blog Engage has a monthly Syndication or Management Package which will enable you to no longer be manually submitting or writing your blog posts.With this you can focus on more important factors such as building key relationships with other bloggers and generating new sales. Blog Engage offers unique Blog Management Services which includes everything within the Blog Syndication Package plus content creation for your blog. Each Blog Management Package comes with all features and benefits of the Blog Syndication Packages.

 Here are the features that you can find on their Standard Account. 

• Manual Submission: You can share your article with Blog engage community manually from which you can earn some great amount of visitors as well. 
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These are just afew of the great opportunities that you will get from Blog Engage and watch the traffic flow in the way it should.

5 Things That Have Changed Between Men And Women In This Modern Days

Someone said that this days men seem to want to be women and women want to be men.This statement sounds so funny.The reason for this statement is because apparently men like doing feminine things and women like doing masculine things.I do not think the statement that men want to be women and women want to be men quiet fits because that may not be the case.Some men love wearing women's clothes and makeup and like behaving like women,those are called cross dresser.For some of them it is just a preference.Some men love make up and nail polish mostly clear nail polish.Which just mean this men like taking extra care of themselves and also love fashion.Men do get manicures and pedicures which does not mean they want to be women but just means they like to be pampered too.

There are men who like cooking and even turn that into a career and they are quiet good at it.This does not mean they want to be women.They are just doing something that they are passionate about.Some men just like cleaning the house taking care of kids,some pick careers that are labelled as feminine like receptionists,secretarial,nursing,hairdressing, nanny and baby sitting .Which does not mean they want to be women they are just picking a job.

Some women work as truckdrivers,CEOs,managers,electricians,engineers, construction workers.Since those are labelled as masculine jobs it should not mean women picking these jobs want to be men.They are just going for what they are passionate about.The amazing thing is that men seem to be so good at the so called feminine jobs.And women seem to be so good at the so called masculine jobs.And that is a good thing.Do you feel the same way as i do?

photos from pixabay.com

What Are The Wrong reasons for getting married?-Getting Married For The Wrong Reasons

Some people get into marriage for so many reasons.Some get into marriage for the wrong reasons and some get into marriage for the right reasons.The reasons that lead you to marriage do determine your happiness.If you get into marriage for the right reasons your chance for happiness will be very high.If you get into marriage for the wrong reasons your chances for happiness will be so low.Getting into marriage just because you are expecting a child by mistake is one of the most common of all.It is wrong to get married only because of the baby you are expecting.

Two wrongs can not make a right in such situations.Because it is wrong for two people to marry where there is no love.This leads to loneliness and infidelity.People are forced to marry by their parents only because the are expecting a child.Those parents do not realize what they are setting up for their children.This leads to an empty miserable marriage.Another wrong reason is getting married for financial support.This reason is maybe the most common of them all.Another wrong reason for getting married is because the society dictates it.The society dictates that one should be married and one should be married by a certain age.Some people even marry for prestige.

They may marry someone just because of their race.Maybe their race is considered to be superior.For others maybe the person is famous or comes from a famous family.Because such things are so superficial they make your
reasons for marrying so wrong.If you marry for all the wrong reasons almost if not everything in your marriage will be wrong and a disaster.What are your views on the wrong reasons for getting marriedand have i left anything out?

photos from pixabay.com 

 Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws.
 Marriage can be recognized by a state, an organization, a religious authority, a tribal group, a local community or peers. It is often viewed as a contract.

The defination of what marriage is is from wikipedia.org

Why 50 Shades Of Grey Was Banned In Kenya

The movie 50 shades of grey has been banned in kenya just like the movie Wolf Of Wall Street which was banned last year. Kenyan movie regulator cites prolonged and explicit scenes.That is their reason for banning the film 50 Shades Of Grey in Kenya.And just like Wolf Of Wall Street anyone caught distributing or owning the movie 50 Shades Of Grey will be charged in a Court of law.The movie regulators know that when they ban a film that is when it gets the most downloads.People get even more curious and want to know what the movie is about.They should have just rated the movie as adults only.Just like Wolf Of Wall Street many kenyans want to see what they are being stopped to see and their is no stopping them.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance novel by British author E. L. James. It is the first installment in the Fifty Shades trilogy that traces the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey. It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM). Originally self-published as an ebook and a print-on-demand, publishing rights were acquired by Vintage Books in March 2012.
The second and third volumes, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, were published in 2012. Fifty Shades of Grey has topped best-seller lists around the world, including those of the United Kingdom and the United States. The series has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and been translated into 52 languages,and set a record in the United Kingdom as the fastest-selling paperback of all time.^[8] Critical reception of the book, however, has tended toward the negative, with the quality of its prose generally seen as poor. Universal Pictures and Focus Features produced a film adaptation, which was released on 13 February 2015 and also received generally unfavorable reviews.

The description of the movie 5O Shades Of Grey is from the all amazing wikipidea.org


This movie is so far the best selling this year worldwide

How Giuliani Rancic Of E! Comment On Zendaya's Hairdo Was Not Racist

   On Sunday night at the Grammies red-carpet, actress/musician Zendaya had a waist-length faux locs hair style. It was a very different look for Zendaya.Since she had a pixie cut earlier that week she decided to rock a natural hair style.Zendaya is always gorgeous and i love her but i do not quiet like this look on her. This look sparked a war on Twitter.During E!’s Fashion Police Oscars edition show, host Giuliana Rancic commented on Zendaya’s red- carpet hair style, saying that her dreadlocks made Zendaya look like she smelled of “patchouli oil and weed. 

 https://twitter.com/giulianarancic

 https://twitter.com/zendaya

    People on Twitter erupted in anger, calling Rancic's joke racist, xenophobic, distasteful, and ignorant (and citing Giuliana's previous praise of Kylie Jenner for rocking dreadlocks as hypocrisy ).Ok maybe Giuliana was favouring Kylie Jenner or maybe liked that look more on her but she was not racist.On fashion Police they like same looks on one person and dislike it on another person.It is true people may have the same look but one may look good and the other may not look that good.

  Dreadlocks are a natural look and have nothing to do with race.Dreadlocks are a cultural look and some people look good with the look and some do not.I would never do that hairdo be it with my own hair or extentions because am not a huge fun of it.Ok i do like the look on some people but not everyone can rock that style. Giuliana was just stating her opinion on that look and since she did not like that look on Zendaya and made fun of it.It was not racist.She just did not like the look on Zendaya.I get that people jumped the gun and said Giuliana was ignorant or racist. On Fashion Police they make fun of everyone based on their fashion donts and praise everyone when they ace a look despite their race.For those people who think dreadlocks are a black womans natural look i am gladly going to correct you it is not.It is a cultural look for Rastafarians.

  Giuliana's joke was nowhere near racist.Sometimes people get mistaken and this was not a racist moment.Giuliana did apologies on Twitter and on E-entertainment but people still where relactant to listen to her apology.If a white girl can rock a look better than a black girl and you point that out on Fashion Police style that doesnt make it racist in any way.People should take it easy on this one, Guiliana is not racist.I am African i see how Guiliana's comment was taken the way it was.But drealocks are not a natural African hair look and most people associate that look with weed smoking because it is a cultural look and people make fun of that look so many times like a Guiliana did in that context.There is nothing racist with that.

  You can tell an ignorant or racist people by the way the relate and act with people of other races and Guiliana is not one of those racist people.I see the way she relates with her African-American colleagues at E-entertainment.And she is always warm and loving with them.For Zendaya i love her and see how she would interpret this as ignorant nor racist but that was not one of Zendaya's best looks on the red-carpet and it is ok.All celebrities have their not so great looks on the red-carpet and even others never ever get best looks lol. What do you think about this incident was everything taken way out of context?