Month: September 2008

wish I had said this

Sadly, No! » It’s time to bring back the public stocks:

Just because you live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t make you more authentic than me. It just means you have a much longer drive to the airport.

Now, ever since Sarah Palin came along, this election has been falsely framed as a contest between salt-of-the-earth, small-time maverick westerners and snooty eastern elites. You know, there’s people who go to church on Sunday, and there’s people who go to brunch.

Even fast-talking, cross-dressing Rudy Giuliani – the former mayor of New York City – accused Obama of being too cosmopolitan. That’s like being called a douche-bag by Andy Dick.

And…and listen to Mitt Romney from the same convention. He said, “If America really wants change, it’s time to look for the sun in the west, because it’s about to rise and shine from Arizona and Alaska. Of course, if the sun actually did rise in the west, that would mean the earth is spinning backwards and we’d all fly into space. But, then Mormons were never big on science. As you well know.

But, what Mitt was getting at is that the East Coast is where all the liberals, with their bad ideas, come from. You know, bad ideas like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As opposed to the brilliant ideas that have come out of the west like frontier justice and wearing cowboy boots with a suit.

The ideas this nation was founded on came from the most cosmopolitan people of their day, the founding fathers, who believed in science, who looked to Europe for wisdom, and who had no use for ignorant hicks like Bush and Palin.

Truth is – the truth is, as America moved west and got farther away from its birthing in Boston and Philadelphia, it became less American, not more. We keep hearing about small-town values, you know, like shooting wolves from an airplane or forcing your daughter into a doomed, loveless marriage.

Cities are about diversity of thought. Small towns are about…well, crystal meth. And, last year, police found 42 meth labs in Sarah Palin’s home county. Drug addiction is a terrible thing, but apparently it beats living in Wasilla sober.

There’s so much meth in this town, I’m surprised the Palins didn’t have a kid named “Tweaker.”

So, now I know what they mean when they talk about the Alaska spirit. Ah, yes, Alaska, where the townsfolk are jittery and the hockey players screw right through the condoms.

messaging

Exactly.

And so what makes Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” commercials so jaw-droppingly bad is that they’re not countering Apple’s message, but instead they’re reinforcing it. That the spots themselves jump between dozens of different people who “are” PCs, that the spots make a point of emphasizing that there are a billion Windows-running PCs worldwide, this only emphasizes that “PC” is not a brand name but a generic.

This is what advertising is about — making you the consumer want the New Improved thing, with Whiter Whites/Scrubbing Bubbles/Moxie. All this campaign does is try to convince you that generic is OK, that wanting the common denominator is acceptable. What next? Airbrushing out Vista from product lineup shots? Have you seen Bob lately?

ouch . . .

Seattlest: Seinfeld Canceled by Microsoft:

Valleywag is reporting that the $300 million Microsoft ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld has been canceled as the company seeks other ways to remind consumers that its products, like the characters in the ads, were totally cool in the Nineties, but now, not so much.

Windows was cool? Musta missed that.

You know, the old-fashioned way of winning customer loyalty is by making stuff that doesn’t, you know, suck. $300MM could have bought some of that, I think.

ready to lead on day one?

This isn’t someone I want to have the nuclear launch codes.

Details have emerged about how Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email account was broken into, including a hacker’s claim he was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password.

The hacker guessed that Alaska’s governor had met her husband in high school, and knew Palin’s date of birth and home Zip code.

Using those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo’s service into assigning a new password, “popcorn” for Palin’s email account, according to a chronology of the crime published on the website where the hacking was first revealed.

[From How hackers broke into Palin’s email – News – Builder AU]

9 nations, meet 11 representative communities

So where do you live, in the map of Patchwork Nation?

Campaign 2008: Patchwork Nation: Comunity Types > Monied ‘Burbs | The Christian Science Monitor:

The Monied ‘Burbs consist of 304 counties holding more than 84 million people, making them the largest and the wealthiest locales in Patchwork Nation.

Wealthier and slightly younger than America as a whole, this group also stands out for its educational attainment. More than one-quarter of the adults in these communities have college degrees, compared with 17 percent in the average U.S. county. The Monied ‘Burbs were an uber “battleground” group in 2004. They split their votes almost evenly between President Bush (49.4 percent) and John Kerry (49.6 percent) and figure to be crucial in 2008 as well.

The Monied ‘Burbs and their politics are represented by Los Alamos, N.M., in Patchwork Nation.

If “educational attainment” is the hallmark of this group, why the $%^&* did half of them vote for Bush in 2004?

This makes more sense than the Red vs Blue state map, since these patchwork elements are more likely to map onto voting precincts.
Continue reading “9 nations, meet 11 representative communities”

this sums it up

Sadly, No! » Best Advice Ever:

Don’t EVER let idiot whackjob wingnuts try to claim they are brave and Liberals are cowards. Let me put it this way:

One group has a huge need to walk around with guns and keep arsenals in their homes to feel safe. The other group has no such need, and doesn’t seem to suffer in the least by not being armed to the teeth.

Remember: republicans are cowards. They prove it with every gun they brag about.

A corollary: all bullies are cowards. Why else pick on the younger/smaller/unarmed?