Random musings on politics, society, and pop culture from the Internet's marketing curmudgeon.
As many of you may know, I’m a big fan of Jeeps. This has not always been the case. It’s really an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible change in my thinking, thanks to 9/11. Sound odd? Read on…
To give you an idea of my history and love/hate affair with the automobile, here’s a list of the cars I’ve owned/driven: [Read more…] about Jeep-ers, Creepers!
Just when the going gets weird…it gets even weirder.
Today, the Fed dropped the Prime to .25%. I’m no math genius or financial wizard, but that means that the Federal Reserve is loaning banks money for 1/4 of a percent. That’s 1/4 of a percent away from FREE. This means that if a bank actually has money to loan, and if you’re credit is squeaky-clean (know anybody like that? I don’t…) you can get a loan for a ridiculously low rate.
Mere mortals need not apply.
I’m sure everybody’s gonna wonder and worry over this. I don’t know why – when the Treasury is printing money like spammers send bulk emails, it’s all funny money. The only worry here is what are they gonna do when we get to ZERO? To cut rates further than that, we’d have to do negative interest, in other words, have the government pay the banks to take their money.
Oh, wait…they’re kinda already doing that. It’s called the TARP funds program.
Whoops.
Not much to say about this, other than buckle your seatbelts…it’s gonna be a bumpy night week month year decade.
Went out shoppin’ with the fam’ tonight. First time this holiday season. Being in Amarillo, traffic wasn’t that bad (our idea of rush hour is when a Farmer’s combine breaks down on what we laughingly here call the “Loop”…it was a good 12 months after I moved here before I was able to stop laughing maniacally, every time someone mentioned the words “rush hour” locally). Of course, some places are the same the world over. Never been in a Hobby Lobby at any time of day/year, for instance, where there wasn’t a line at every available register. But I digress. [Read more…] about Happy Holly-Dazed.
I’m I the only one that is watching the situation in Illinois with a sense of 70’s déjà vù? I mean, this is kind of like watching the döppelganger of a famous scandal (that gave us the postfix “-gate”). I was all of 16 years old, between my junior and senior years in high school in 1974. I was at Louisiana Boys’ State, learning about government down in Baton Rouge – the state capitol. They called us into a big hall and had us sit down and get quiet. Nobody told us what was going on, but we knew it was something bad from the solemn looks on all the adult’s faces. Richard Nixon’s voice came on the radio. He announced that he was resigning from the Presidency.
You could have heard a pin drop. Some 350-odd teenage boys, not breathing, not making a sound. It was history being made, and we all knew it.
So you see, I have a special connection to Watergate. And I know that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. Let’s see how we’re doing so far: [Read more…] about Governorgate.
…is good for America, or to be completely accurate, “What was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa”, or so said Charles Erwin Wilson, Ike’s Secretary of Defense back in the 50’s. He believed that anything that was good for GM was good for America, because the two economies were inexorably intertwined. But what is good for General Motors?
I’ve been following the bailout of the Big Three for a long time. And I’ve got some ideas on a REAL solution…not this three-card Monte they’re playing in Congress. Real solutions. Here’s my ideas: [Read more…] about What’s good for General Motors…
NEWS ITEM: Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested today by FBI agents for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a “staggering” level of corruption involving pay to play politics in Illinois’ top office.
Blagojevich is accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy, including alleged attempts by the governor to try to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. Blagojevich also is accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.
FBI agents served a search warrant on his office at the Thompson Center this morning, said Frank Bochte, an FBI spokesman.
Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning—one day shy of his 52nd birthday.
One of the many benefits of having a home office is having a TV on my desk. I keep it tuned to Fox News or the Sirius Classic Jazz channel for most of the day – having either a background of news or jazz suits me just fine. I also have a conveniently-located mute button, in case I need to take a call, work on audio, or if it gets distracting.
This time of year, most companies pushing gifts spend a year’s worth of ad budgets in 30 days or less. Where as before November 2nd we were assaulted with All Political Ads, All The Time, now it’s ads for Omaha Steaks (making me hungry), has-been singers pushing a Greatest Hits album, or the latest and greatest kitchen appliance, each and every one guaranteed to be The Perfect Christmas Gift.
I’m sure you’re as annoyed with this kind of dreck as I am – at least you would be if you left your TV on all day. My vote for the most annoying ad in the Fox News rotation? Christy Lane’s 30 Christmas Classics. [Read more…] about As scene on TV…
When I was a kid, there were three things I loved – listening to live music, watching live theatre, and going to the movies. In short, entertainment needed to be live or larger than life to jazz me. As I grew up and became a professional musician, my love of live music was tempered by my knowledge. In other words, since I was no longer blissfully ignorant, a slightly out-of-tune french horn or drummer that rushed a little really bugged me – to the point where I could pay attention to nothing other than what to me were glaring errors. Kind of a bummer, really. Can’t tell you how many otherwise fine events have been spoiled for me that way. [Read more…] about Dr. StrangeGun.
We just lit up a new site for RiverFields – an Amarillo-based sporting goods shop that specializes in fly fishing, hunting, and self-defense. Their old site was, dated, to put it mildly. The reason was, it required a web guy to make any changes. It was just way too difficult for RiverFields to make changes conveniently. Therefore, they simply didn’t change anything. For several years. At all.
We began the new site by designing it with an eye towards how they’d be able to update it easily. That meant designing it for Adobe Contribute (so they could make changes to the text and static pictures) and implement a content management system so they could easily make changes/additions/deletions to their photo galleries (using the worth-its-weight-in-gold SlideShow Pro Director).
You can see the new site at www.riverfields.com. You can compare and contrast it with the old site, which (for a while yet) is online at www.riverfields.com/oldsite.
Let me know what you think.
Karma. What goes around comes around. Fate. Call it what you will, it looks as if Orinthal Julius Simpson has finally gotten what he deserves. I’m not sure if the time he’ll serve is more severe because of his infamy over beating the rap for murdering his wife and a waiter. It could be that he’ll serve less time, because he’s famous. In this case, I doubt it, because he already used his “Get out of Jail FREE” card he was issued due to his fame. Nope, I think he’s getting what he’s gotten, at least partially because he got off scott-free before. Not just that – he got off, and then spent the intervening years searching for his wife’s “real” killer on the nation’s finest golf courses.
Give me a break. [Read more…] about O.J. (Karmically speaking.)