All You People using Blogger

Hey all you people using blogger! Most especially, those who require a gmail account to even look at your updates, please at least open up to the idea that maybe not everyone has gmail or needs gmail. The missus and I like having email acounts that are on different services, so that I don't have to sign out when she signs in and vice versa.

She's on yahoo and I'm on gmail.

Both services are good, I would go so far as to say they're probably the best options for anyone needing a permanent email address. It works out for her to have the yahoo account as well, since yahoo has the .au but gmail does not, and she's the Aussie in this relationship.

So what ends up happening, is that she has to sign in using my account to view those locked down blogger blogs, and that inevitably leads to confusion because readers of those comments will end up here.

The Octopus

I came up with a name for the new do that's everywhere now. It's the Octopus. Remember the 'reverse mullet'? This derogatory term is used for the wedge cut gone wrong, or sported by people who don't look good in it.

The Octopus is, in simple terms, the do sported by Carol Brady (from the Brady Bunch) for a while, in which the hair is cut short, almost a ball shape, and wisps are left at the bottom, which stick out. This name comes from the fact that hairs on the top of the scalp are cut short, forming a sort of ball or blob at the top, and then long strands of hair, which attach closer to the neck are left, sortof like tentacles.

A lot of attractive girls are sporting this look, at least the ones I see on the train, but to me it's layering gone horribly wrong, and doesn't look good!

Songs and People

Have you had this experience? A song comes on, and you instantly think of the same person, every single time? I have, and I feel the urge to share a few of those with you, my adoring fans of the present and future.

Lady in Red - Rignon Foltz - age 17ish
When You Say Nothing At All - Melissa Posner - age 19
Head Like a Hole - Lynne Marie Doty - age 19
Transatlantic - Sharole age 21
Stockton Gala Days - Melissa Posner - age 24ish
Hanging by a Moment - Jessica Smiley - age 25
Closer to Fine - Jessica Smiley - age 25
Everything I Do - Sharole - age 26

Also, If it Makes You Happy was one that re-occurred on my mission, mostly because I didn't really get the point of the song till much later.

Ages are my age at the time.

Actors

The problem of having big name actors play underachievers in movies. And not just underachievers, but losers, low income housing project dwellers, etc.

1) This actor or actress (I refuse to let go the female form) has appeared in other movies in which he/she is a super rockstar brainy ass kicking winner.

2) The actor's training to date has polished the performance to the point where there's still an element of lookit me I'm awesome in every move and gesture (unless you're Josh Hartnett, who's acting seems to say lookit me I'm awesome but still acts on the level of a high school play).

3) Promotion and hype makes people think the movie is gonna be about rockstar winners.

Will Smith tried to start out as a low income loser in The Pursuit of Happyness
Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You
There was one more that really bothered me but now it slips my mind.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, Jack Black is a big name these days, and he's always playing a low income underachiever type. I'm sure there are other examples of people who can pull this off, but he does comedy, which means hammy, like Ethan Hawke in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, only that was more of a tragi-drama not comedy, but definitely hammy.

Now I am rambling.

Fertilizer

I should go into advertising, I care so much about it.

Today's rant is another lobby ad placed in the Metro. First, none of us are farmers, we don't care about fertilizer, and second, the ad was so smarmy and overbearing as to be irritating, who would actually believe anything that organization is saying?

The ad consisted of a large photo (the entire left half) of little girl eating pasta, very cute, and on the right in beautiful retro font 'Every recipe begins with the same essential ingredient,' then a blurb about fertilizer, and towards the bottom as large as can be 'Fertilizer.' Juxtaposing a word like fertilizer with the image of a cute little girl eating pasta was clearly intended to stick in the mind as a contradiction, but I found the whole ad grating, especially the slick expensive look of it, as though it were done by a very expensive firm charging expensive amounts of dollars.

There's no other information about who is pushing fertilizer, except in the blurb (the fine print, if you will) the web address nutrients(nospace)forlife.org. Not only is a .org listed, but we have no idea what org might be behind this ad, although one can instantly assume it's a lobby.

1) What a waste of money
2) What do they hope to gain?

I can only guess that the lobby has loads of cash it knows not what to do with, so it spends it on a slick ad campaign/website, per agreements with interested parties of course, but seriously, what do they hope to gain? If they were lucky, maybe one person riding the metro out of the thousands each day would have any influence on the fate of fertilizer. Is it in the hope that public opinion is swayed for when related issues are being voted on? I guess that's the whole point of PR, but I still think it's a waste of resources.

McDonald's

Don't worry, nothing happened in November. Nothing.

Today is a rant against McDonald's, and companies like it.

I might should consider myself lucky I can't remember the last time (before this recent time) that I got spam on my cell phone. I have received txt ads, but last week I got a spam voicemail. From McDonald's.

Most of the trash I see on the street, and the trash I saw yesterday in the Metro (where food and drink are not allowed) is McDonald's (not to be read as belonging to McDonald, but identified with the food chain (not that food chain)). You might say their doors are open to everyone, so they can't help what kind of litterbug people eat there, so I'm not sure why I exactly specifically mentioned that except that that particular rant has is close to the surface and burst out because the topic was either litter or McDonald's.

After I told my wife about the spam voicemail she said our neighbor had to change her cell phone number because somehow she was getting literally way too many spams on her phone. Did not clarify whether they were txt or voicemail.

The McDonald's voicemail was a computerish voice saying something like 'hold on for a message' and then a dude that sounded black came on, in conversational tone, starting with 'hey joe, i know you like a good deal..' blah blah for about 10 seconds.

I was mostly just surprised. I had to listen to the message again to understand it because I don't understand black people talk very well, being 1) hearing imparied and 2) Mormon. I got the gist of it and then deleted it, and at the same time wondered to myself why McDonald's would stoop so low? Why are they pushing so much, when clearly they could cease all advertising for a year and people would still flock to the red and yellow by the billions.

I have no conclusion exactly except this theory that while they are charging new franchises exorbitant amounts of cash just for the name, they're probably writing into the contract stuff like "it will be so worth it" and "we take care of the advertising." I'm assuming the estimated value of advertising goes up when applied across a larger spectrum (such as unsuspecting cell phones) and therefore the cash they can extort goes up.


On a totally unrelated note, I was on wikipedia, the front page, which one should never visit lest you actually start reading stuff that makes you read more stuff. I went from Roman Polanski to his rape trial to the Tate murders to the Family members that were convicted. Sickening.