Category: Uncategorized

‘Bad Blood’ – A Story of Perspective

All text in a box is from 2025.
Everything else is the original blog, verbatim.
Cringe and all.
'Bad Blood' - A Story of Perspective
November 16, 2015

Until the Bad Blood blog, my stories were about cats and dogs,
being fired, corporate nonsense, dogs, The Voice, Fear the Walking Dead, more dogs, and memes.

Trump was doing Trump things dismantling the GOP
while talking nonsense in the process.

Then terrorist attacks occurred in Paris.
Friday, November 13th, 2015

I used the Paris attack to give perspective on pop culture in America.

The blog alluded to my hypothetical friendship with Taylor Swift. I claimed that I was the inspiration for Bad Blood and owed her an apology.

I used a real tragedy to highlight larger issues than celebrity feuds.
I asked for her and Katy Perry to get back together.
Silly, I know.

Hard to believe that was 10 years ago.

Taylor released Reputation on November 10, 2017. By then, I'd learned a lot more about what happened to my company and its demise. Reputation resonated deeply as it aligned with so much of my life at the time.

In April 2019, I'd summed up the story of my company in two blogs;
Self Made Storyteller and He Gave and Hath Taken Away.
Taylor wasn't mentioned in either story.

Later that year, Katy showed up in the You Need To Calm Down music video.
It was a fun moment, but I didn't think too deeply about it.

Then COVID hit and I stopped writing.
2020 was 2020.

I spent the better part of 2021 reclaiming my mindset.

By the end of 2021, inspiration jolted me to life.

Optimistic as ever, I posted a Future So Bright blog in January 2022.

Midnights dropped in October 21, 2022.
Midnights changed everything.

Swiftie status locked and loaded, I still didn't write. I observed. Midnights led to The Eras Tour led to Travis Kelce led to TTPD led to 2025 led to New Heights led to The Life of a Showgirl.

End Game Gorgeous
The best eggs in life are free.
As far as I'm concerned, it's Easter every day.

Would you believe me if I told you that in 2002 I named my kickball team Swift Kick? True Story.

"As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned"

Peter
Taylor Swift
TTPD

We unite with hashtags. We fight with hashtags. We beg for help with hashtags.

It takes a tragedy like Paris for us to see a wave of humanity. Then, we return to divisive behavior preventing us from learning about, or liking each other.

Technology evolves quicker than our ability to communicate. We read headlines and share them blindly. Online coverage of anything can be spun 50 ways, but our lives shouldn’t be.

I'm a mirrorball
I'll show you every version of yourself
Tonight

Mirrorball
Taylor Swift
Folklore, 2020

This story is an example of how easily we lose perspective. Satire and sarcasm are shared and people believe it’s real. Non-issues become issues overnight. Trolls and stubborn stances ignite vitriol.

You are somebody that I don't know
But you're taking shots at me like it's Patrón
And I'm just like "Damn, it's 7:00 a.m."

You Need To Calm Down
Taylor Swift
Lover, 2019

We need to treat each other better, and it starts with us.

I used to think one day we'd tell the story of us
How we met and the sparks flew instantly
And people would say, "They're the lucky ones"

The Story of Us
Taylor Swift
Speak Now, 2010

Pop lore says Bad Blood is Taylor Swift’s betrayal-anthem to Katy Perry. I think a dancer is involved, possibly a boyfriend. However, this isn’t about them.

This is about my hypothetical former friendship with the most coveted BFF in the world.

The first time I heard Bad Blood, I knew it was about me. I obviously hurt Taylor and I’m on a mission to apologize. I saw all her popular friends in the video and that hurt real bad. I mean I have tits too, I could have been a bad girl supporting a revenge metaphor!

Now go stand in the corner and think about what you did
Ha, time for a little revenge

Better Than Revenge
Taylor Swift
Speak Now, 2010

Here’s the situation.

We were supposed to be just friends
You don't live in my part of town, but maybe I'll see you out some weekend
Depending on what kind of mood and situation-ship I'm in
And what's in my system
I think there's been a glitch, oh, yeah

Glitch
Taylor Swift
Midnights, 2022

Taylor won’t answer my calls, and text apologies are lame; I’m laying it out so we can move on. Besides, there’s nothing more sincere than a public apology, especially, when that’s where the fighting takes place.

I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now
Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead (oh)

Look What You Made Me Do
Taylor Swift
Reputation, 2017

The title says it all. Bad is bad and seeing blood isn’t good – let that sink in for a second. Now, think about Katy Perry believing that was about her. It’s been a lot for me to carry and my back is starting to curve.

They say I did something bad
But why's it feel so good
Most fun I ever had
And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could
It just felt so good, good

I Did Something Bad
Taylor Swift
Reputation, 2017

I always intended to apologize but, like Taylor, I’m a giver and I wanted to send the perfect gift with my apology. But, what do you give someone whose other best friend is Hot and Cold who kissed a girl and liked it? I am a boy, after all.

Truth, dare, spin bottles
You know how to ball, I know Aristotle
Brand new, full throttle
Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto
It's true, swear, scouts honor
You knew what you wanted, and, boy, you got her
Brand new, full throttle
You already know, babe

So High School
Taylor Swift
TTPD, 2024

I was watching Dance Moms when the bulb lit. If it were a dancer, it would kicked me in the head.

Create a reality show for Taylor!

REALITY TV (TRAVIS' VERSION)

I’m waiting for Taylor to name the show since it’s her show, and I don’t need another song written about me.

The show is about a dancer and Paula Abdul is the choreographer. Paula was at the height of her music career in ’89 when the world received Taylor – it’s poetic.

The show is in Vegas – every dancer’s wildest dream!

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere
Fell behind all my classmates, and I ended up here
Pouring out my heart to a stranger
But I didn't pour the whiskey

This Is Me Trying
Taylor Swift
Folklore, 2020

Taylor is mama bird and she nurtures baby bird – a dancer discovered on Instagram – resulting in baby bird signing a Vegas contract without any drama!

I hit you like "Bang"
We tried to forget it, but we just couldn't
And I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put em'
Reputation precedes me, they told you I'm crazy
I swear I don't love the drama, it loves me
And I can't let you go, your handprint's on my soul
It's like your eyes are liquor, it's like your body is gold
You've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks
So here's the truth from my red lips

End Game
Taylor Swift
Reputation, 2017

My wildest dream is for baby bird to land on Katy’s very own Vegas stage and perform an interpretive dance to Roar.

Imagine Taylor in the front row while she and Katy crinkle their noses and paw at each other all cute like!

This will prove their blood is, in fact, good and she never expected any contract dancer (or boyfriend) to be loyal.

Lofty goals, right? I best get to apologizing.

The reason I didn’t name Taylor’s show (I’m thinking The Bird Nurturer) is because naming things caused our falling out. Taylor names everything. She names her songs. She names her cats. She probably names her fans’ cats. I think there’s a hashtag for that.

I was born in 1974 which was the year of the Tiger.
My elementary school mascot was a Tiger. (The colors were Orange and Black)
My junior high mascot was a Panther.(The colors were Black and Gold)
My high school mascot was a Lynx.(The colors were Maroon and Gold)
My college mascot was also a Panther.(The colors were Black and Gold)
Midnights was released in 2022 which was the year of the Tiger.

I even suggested she choose whether Katy’s fans are Kats or Cats. Bring a litter box for that shit storm! Fans of pop stars are a protective bunch, even with infighting.

Kansas City?

Even more protective are pop starts, themselves, when it comes to what they call their fans.

I see the typo. I said verbatim.

Our turmoil began when I told Taylor I thought she should call her fans The Swizzle Sticks with the hashtag #tswizzlesticks to unite their online musings. I told her I thought her name should be Mother Swizzle Sticks because she is like their mother.

Her face went blank space. Never question an accomplished artist’s creativity and definitely lay off their fans. Role models with millions of underage fans won’t refer to them as drink accessories.

She accused me of trying to turn parents against her by encouraging underage drinking. She reminded me she’s a role model. Then, she asked me, persistently, if I knew what she was and wouldn’t relent until I screamed, “Role model!”

She accused me of talking to Katy because pop star espionage is real.

The damage was done. Trust flew out the window like a baby bird.

She told me it was so sad to think about the good times she and I had, but now we got problems.

I asked her, can we solve them? She said she didn’t think we could.

I asked her, do we still have mad love? She said we used to.

That’s a no. I hope we can put this behind us; we were so good together.

In addition to her show (hopefully called The Bird Nurturer), I created a new app because she needs more cash. It’s called Pocket Squad.

Your squad walks around your screen while you control everything about them. It’s perfect for members of squads. You can make them get eaten by a shark or pace back and forth all day. You can make birds poop on them or strike them with lightning. They can live on a beach or jungle. It’s your squad!

Basically, it’s what you wish you could do to your real life squad.

Taylor, I’m sorry. Call your fans whatever you want. Come on, old friend – I miss our mad love! #think-about-the-good-times-you-and-i-had!

It shouldn’t take a coordinated attack to remind us the hostility among ourselves is senseless.

I hope we can learn to keep perspective without the harsh reminders.

After I wrote this blog in 2015, I never read it again until 2025.
I told people about it, as I did with many stories, but nobody cared.
I didn't have the drive to do anything. 

I noticed Katy Perry's cameo in the You Need To Calm Down music video.
That made me smile, but I was in a bad head space. I didn't even care.
By that time, I thought the world was against me. Nothing made sense. 

I knew, deep in my soul, something nefarious was ongoing.
I chalked it up to being larger than anything I could fathom.
But COVID extinguished any drive I had left for caring.

I never listened to folklore or evermore until Midnights. 
But a switch flipped with the Eras Tour.
And it's been a crazy super added level of my awakening.
And here we are.

Maybe someday we can have nice things.

Today is August 31, 2025.
10 YEARS AGO TODAY, I POSTED MY FIRST BLOG
ON DEVILISH SMIRK

I am currently working on a Devilishly Clever something
to share the results of this 10-year project.
More to come, but I am very much looking forward to sharing.
With that, I leave you with a snippet from earlier today.
Still nailing down the date.

It’s never too late to dream.
You can always discover, create, tweak, fine-tune, evolve, enhance, and achieve dreams.

However, there’s a caveat.
It’s work,
and not necessarily work you get paid to do.
At least, not at first.
It’s work that might pay off down the road.

Your imagination becomes exponentially more active
the more you open, stretch, strengthen,
and train your imagination.

Imagination training is exhausting for an activity
that doesn’t involve physical exertion.
The only thing you lift is your spirit,
which ultimately lifts you.

Whatever you do, do not abandon your dreams,
even if you pause for five years.

I haven’t made a penny with this hobby.
This was pure passion.

I didn’t start this for money.
I did it because it was so f***ing fun.
The only reason I’m here today is because
I poured my heart and soul into something
I was deeply passionate about;
my own life.

For 15 years my former company, et alia, provided me a sense of job security, until that security was taken away.

Self Made Storyteller laid the foundation for this story. Here's a little more background and context.

At et alia, our “good times” emerged in cycles, each one increasingly larger than the last – both in good and bad ways. None were as monumental as the final cycle. It ended in spectacular and rapid fashion.

The stakes were high that cycle, which spanned from 2009 to 2014.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

The next opportunity was risky, and at the expense of personal financial stability.

It’s give and take, only you don’t take anything. You receive.

Welcome to Devilish Smirk.

Facts of the Matter

et alia had a good run, but a sad ending. What I didn’t realize at the time was the “why” behind its demise.

Extraneous forces were hard at work for years trying to accomplish something. What, exactly, wouldn’t be clear for a while (i.e. years after et alia’s dissolution).

What’s amazing about et alia’s demise was that we were extremely well positioned in our niche within the SAP ecosphere, much to the chagrin of others in the industry.

et alia developed CREW, the SAP’s vertical industry solution for construction, general contractors, specialty trade contractors, and project-based services. All the while, building a database of industry trade secrets from which to develop the Intellectual Property that would ultimately be stolen and sold around the world.

To our face, SAP told us that CREW was their “go to market” solution for construction and project-based contractors. They would tell customers the same thing if any expressed concern about et alia’s longevity due to its size.

“Help Us!”

Every time SAP reached out to et alia for help, they had their tail between their legs. We called those opportunities rescues. A rescue was necessary when SAP initially fell on their face in front of a prospect.

After each rescue, we thought we’d proved ourselves to the point of loyalty. Sadly, no. We’d find out about yet, another rescue.

What became apparent is that SAP would routinely keep us in the dark about their prospects in deals where CREW’s functionality was relevant and essential. They hated their reliance on et alia.

SAP asked us to use et alia’s CREW system for demonstrations, but never invited us to the demos. They even went so far as to ask us to remove the et alia logo from the CREW demo system.

The partnership agreement et alia had with SAP guaranteed et alia a percentage of the SAP software cost when et alia CREW was part of the sales cycle.

Prospects would often wonder why SAP never introduced et alia earlier, but most times it was too little too late. Then, SAP would blame et alia for any loss because our implementation costs were too high.

If anything, we were on the low end of consulting costs.

Even still, SAP would introduce different implementation partners, sometimes using our proposals, at significantly reduced rates (but better licensing profit).

A past prospect of et alia's notified us when SAP returned with our proposal with a different implementation partner and rates.

But one of the most important customer they lied to was Turner Construction Company.

Again?

At the time et alia met Turner, SAP already lost the account. Turner was ready to sign Oracle contracts in mid-2009 when an et alia saleswoman got her foot in the door at a construction networking event.

Coincidence? I'm not so certain anymore.

Shockingly, Turner had never heard of et alia. They didn’t know et alia had actually developed functionality that SAP wasn’t able to show because they didn’t have or develop their own functionality.

Turner invited et alia to demonstrate what we’d built so far. Once they realized et alia had developed the functionality that SAP was unable to address, they put their Oracle signing on pause.

They gave et alia 30-days to develop a list of enhancements on top of what we demonstrated.

We returned in 30 days and demonstrated Turner’s requested enhancements on top of what we already had in CREW.

With that, Turner canceled their Oracle signing and began negotiating with the SAP team that Turner kicked out in the first place.

Then SAP came back to et alia in an effort to renegotiate the software license commission agreement we already had in place.

Ultimately for Turner, according to SAP, they discounted SAP software for the Turner licenses approximately 98%. That’s what they told us. et alia still received roughly $900,000 (which was 20% of the discounted list price).

Convenience has never been so obvious.

Pillars of Importance

A life without learning isn't much of a life at all. That's what happens when threading together the frayed cluster of a rope's loose ends.

What et alia did in the SAP industry helped expose the level of economic crime and fraud in the SAP sales process and subsequent implementations.

No wonder they wanted us as far away from the licensing side of SAP software...but they still needed to sell systems internationally, in construction and contracting.

Now, what others in the SAP world say is anyone’s guess. We had what felt like “good cops” purporting to be champions of et alia, and others who did nothing to mask their disdain for everything about us.

I’ll let et alia’s track record speak for itself. This is not a comprehensive list. These are important highlights of et alia’s last six years.

2009

SAP, both in the USA and Canada, booked the biggest et alia CREW deals to date. Turner Construction in the USA, and Churchill Corporation in Alberta, Canada. Turner’s project began in September 2009, and Churchill started in October.

Turner had significant concerns over et alia’s longevity due to its size and they were about to become our largest project to date.

Turner was the primary project manager for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

After closing both Turner and Churchill, et alia had grown to 100 fulltime employees.

SAP assured Turner that et alia and CREW were their “go to market” solution for construction.

By some accounts, SAP even mentioned purchasing et alia to Turner.

Fun fact: The CEO of the company that purchased et alia in 2014 joined SAP in December of 2009. Turner contracts were signed in September 2009. His responsibility involved developing SAP's own construction solution. They called it Commercial Project Management (CPM). CPM lacked essential project management and complex union payroll functionality that et alia developed in both US and Canadian implementations.

2010

et alia was actually in discussions to sell as early as 2010 based on the Turner and Churchill success. For one company in particular, we had established a “ballpark” number of $20-something million USD. Those discussions quickly fell apart after an abrupt management change within the interested company.

2011

et alia achieves its highest revenue of any year, nearly $18 million. That was the highest annual revenue for et alia between 1999 and 2014.

2012

In December 2011, Construction Executive magazine names CREW a 2012 Hot Product in Construction. et alia loses its Director of Presales to SAP in January 2012. SAP strong arms et alia into accepting the poach. “Be a good partner, it will be a “win/win” in the future.

et alia doesn’t close another CREW deal for the rest of 2012, and et alia’s rapid decline begins.

2013

et alia’s plunge continues, but sells its final CREW deal. It was a fixed bid, small to midsize construction solution we called CREW Emerging. The customer was LPCiminelli (LPC) in Buffalo, NY. The final bid price was less than $500K, but stretched out over the course of the latter half of the year.

In September, out of financial desperation, et alia offers two executive team members the opportunity to buy in 8% of et alia. One said no, and one bit. The one who bought in 8% was longtime friends with the et alia Director of Presales whom SAP poached in January 2012.

2014

Two companies begin talking to et alia at the same time, Kiewit Construction in the USA (which would change its name to InEight that May) and ILLUMITI in Canada. Somehow, Kiewit became privy to the confidential ILLUMITI discussions (price, specifically), and Kiewit issued a “letter of intent” which halted et alia’s ongoing discussions with ILLUMITI.

et alia sells for the total of its debt with a few dollars on top.

The CEO of the new company is the same gentleman who went to SAP in December 2009, right after et alia and SAP booked the Turner and Churchill deals.

Less than a year later, I was retaliated against for escalating an HR claim to the head of HR who, in turn, forked it over to an HR investigator from Kiewit’s corporate office. The complaint was about the CEO. A week after I was gone, the head of HR was constructively terminated.

Fun Fact: LPC never fully paid et alia at the time of sale in 2014. The way the purchase agreement worked was that all outstanding accounts receivables were received by et alia, paid to Kiewit/InEight, and paid back to et alia. LPC still had an outstanding balance of nearly $45,000 at the time we were terminated. et alia never received that money.

Here in an instant, gone in a flash, what have I done to deserve this?

Suffering is Optional

The past several years have been an intense learning experience about our country and its judicial priorities. What’s clear at this point that the purchase of et alia was a fraudulent transaction, and Kiewit knew it at the time.

The gentleman who signed the purchase agreement knew it, and Kiewit's attorney, who negotiated the contract, but didn't show up to the signing, knew it.

I never knew that until after we were terminated from InEight.

I wonder what would have happened if we pulled out of the sale once the press release announcing the sale was released hours before the signing.

We made the accusation to Kiewit attorneys that the purchase of et alia was fraud on July 7, 2015. More on that in this story that I published in December 2018, a day or so before the government shutdown.

We’ve had lawyers deter us from proceeding, telling us there’s nothing that can be done about this situation. Eventually, in January 2016, we went to the FBI’s Phoenix office and reported everything we knew at the time.

Later that year, after not hearing from the FBI, we contacted a Russian embassy reporting what we knew to be major constitutional violations against us as U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, the world is over a barrel while the United States deals with its Trump nightmare.

Plenty of people out there would like historic truths about et alia to remain buried or forgotten, except neither are options.

Whether or not I can make a difference in a corrupt world remains to be seen, but I feel a hell of a lot better not sitting on the facts I know.

This is life, and life is a fulltime job.

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