Life is hard dear reader...life is hard...but we can always seek the things that make us smile

"it taught me something about storytelling. People will nearly always respond to ‘human’ stories because their emotions are involved."

   
Sarah, thanks for your post. That is what I’m getting at. The argument speaks to authenticity, the human connection, revealing some personal detail that helps build a bond and lets the audience see our human side. Actually, I wasn’t even being playful — I was revealing the fact that our dog (my wife’s dog, naturally) makes me smile and by doing that I am reminding people that there is a real person behind these words with real human emotions and feelings. I’ve seen it used and advised on numerous occasions. What I also found interesting here is the observation that the image is “all powerful”. I wonder how many people, upon seeing the dog images, will jump to the conclusion that my comment is related to how many silly cat and dog pictures now flood the web. The images can take control of the direction of our thinking in an instant. That’s power right there.