This week Forbes Magazine published a cover story titled: Attack Of The Blogs. The piece is so funny one is almost ready to believe that it’s parody. But it isn’t. Kurt Opsahl, however, has posted a great parody of the Forbes piece in The Attack Of The Printing Press. Those pesky founders. They keep getting in the way of the Republican Wrong.
Have Coffee Will Write’s first anniversay is coming up this month (the 9th) and I wanted to do something special to celebrate. A while back, over coffee at Lucky’s, Adam Harvey and I discussed how ironic/uncanny it was that the songs I happened to be listening to at the time I write meshed so well with the posts themselves.
Only a few days later, Adam made this comment to a post.
At the time I thought: wouldn’t it be great to run a contest for the most ironic/uncanny/whatever? But what, I wondered, to offer as prizes?
Since I was listening to WOXY, I realized that WOXY merchandise would be perfect. I sent an email off to Bryan Jay Miller, the stations general manager, asking if he’d be interested in sending me some promo stuff. He emailed me back yesterday and offered three CDs and some WOXY bumper stickers.
The CDs are by Stellastarr: Harmonies For The Haunted, Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s: The Dust Of Retreat and Death Cab For Cutie: Plans.
Here’s how the contest will work:
Pick your favorite WOXY song/Have Coffee Will Write post combination and email it to me.. I, and an intrepid panel of distinguished judges will examine them and pick 1st, 2nd 3rd place winners. The 1st place winner will get their choice of CD; the 2nd place winner will get to pick between the remaining two CDs; and, of course, 3rd place will get the remaining CD.
Depending upon how many bumper stickers Bryan sends me, I’ll either give each winner one, or I may pass them out as runner-up prizes.
The deadline for entries will be sundown on Wednesday, 30 November. Winners will be announced on Sunday, 1 December. In the unlikely event of duplicate entries (come on guys, I do write a lot.) the winner will be selected at random.
My Soundtrack: Destroying Everything You Touch by Ladytron on WOXY.
[Update — 12 August — The little toothpaste buycott just keeps chugging along. Yesterday it got a boost from USA Today’s Angela Gunn in her Tech_Space Blog.]
[Update — 16 October — As George Nemeth notes, the little meme that could got a boost this week from the folks at Wal Mart The High Cost Of Low Price who put it on the front page of their website in the Get Active category. It had been a while since anyone had picked up the meme and I was beginning to think it had run its course. But the little guy keeps chugging along.]
I cast my my modest proposal for a Wal Mart Toothpaste Buycott into the blogosphere and it is slowly making it’s way across the Internet. So far 23 bloggers have picked it up and begun to spread the word. One of the reasons I did this was to show two of my friends that one person can make a difference. All you got to do is fling one starfish.
My modest proposal supporters include:
Angry Theresa
Angela Gunn’s Tech_Space
Brooke Singer
The Writing On The Wal
Sherry Chandler
Take Action
Baerana
NEWSBlog 5000 (In the sidebar.)
Pho’s Norka Pages
Serendipity 3
Let The Lady Speak
I See Invisible People
PlanetNEO at Okihawk
The Blast Furnace
Janeane Garofalo For The Rest Of Us
Callahan’s Cleveland Diary
Jim Gilliam’s Retail Blogroll
Grass Roots Miami
Brave New Films
Jennie’s Journal
Buy Blue
Daily KOS
My Left Wing
Wal Mart: The High Cost Of Low Prices
Brewed Fresh Daily.
Be sure to read the growing list of comments to their posts, thank you all and the espresso’s on me.
[Update — 2103, 14 September — An interesting develoment in a comment on Target. My modest proposal is starting to take on generic proportions.]
My Soundtrack: Advice From The Happy Hippotamus by Cloud Cult on WOXY.
The almost jubilant notice of the 2,000th death of a U.S. service member in Iraq offends me. Is number 2,000 more important than number 1,999 or 2,001? No. Each death is a terrible loss for a spouse, a child, a parent, our nation. Milestones mean nothing. The average is 17 dead per week. Don’t take notice today. Take notice every day.
It’s been a fun week in Wally World. First, and foremost, No Cleveland Walmart has fully morphed into The Writing On The Wal.. We still have the same stable of local writers, but we added a number of other writers from around the nation. Two major announcements from the Bentonville Behemoth top the news this week:
The Bentonville Behemoth Feels The Heat…
On Monday the Wal Mart buzz was the annoucement concerning the revamping of its employee health care plan. Jonathan Rees posted on the broad scope of the plan but wrote that the details weren’t yet available. The one piece that was touted was the $1,000 deductible workers, some making only $19,000 a year, would pay.
I got a heads up from Philip de Vellis over at Wal Mart Watch about this morning’s New York Times dropping another shoe. The Times pulished an internal memo from Susan Chambers, Wal Marts executive vice president for benefits, to the board of directors. The 27-page memo, titled Reviewing and Revising Wal-Mart”s Benefits Strategy, shows that the corporation has felt the heat from critics about its health care plan. Writes Chamber:
A Little Greenwash On The Wal…
When I was executive editor of GIE’s Recycling Media Group we used to call this kind of news: Green Washing. The term describes what happens when a company decides to make some pro-environmental move to distract people from the more serious environmental and other issues it is facing. You can usually find a PR flack somewhere in the bushes.
Yesterday Wal Mart CEO Lee Scott gave a speech titled Twenty-First Century Leadership. Interestingly enough it is difficult to know where Scott gave the speech and to whom he deliverd it. The Associated Press only says that it was to the store’s employees. The PDF of the speech contains no location or event identification and the company’s website only lists it as 21st Century Leadership.
My Soundtrack: Everybody Loves A Loser by Morcheeba on WOXY.
Speaking of weasels. A certain weaslily ad agency for a certain weasilily fast-food franchiser has been busted trying to do a little Buzz Marketing. Not only is this a good reason not to let the low-life scum co-opt Halloween with stupid product placements, but it’s also a reason to stop buying their products, even if they are flame broiled.
… And vote often, for Scott Adams’ Weasel Of The Year Awards.
My Soundtrack: Travel In Time by Carmen Rizzo on WOXY.
Well, Scott Adams really, but it’s kind of the same thing. What I like about the way Adams is starting out his blog is that he’s showing us a bit of transparency by walking us through the evoution of a strip that was initially nixed by his editors. If he keeps writing about what it takes to do what he does, it will be a fun ride.
At our September Socrates Cafe, we discussed the question: Is it wise for Atheists to stay in the closet? Cenk Uyger is giving us a real-world answer to that question at the The Huffington Post. The story has already — as of 24 October at 0800 — racked up more than 260 comments. Uygur ledes with:
We live in a twisted world, where right is wrong and wrong reigns supreme. It is a chilling fact that most of the world’s leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies. These men are called Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Since the Englightenment the argument has run something like this: Yes, here are fanatics and fundamentalists who committ evil in the name of their god, but that reality should not be allowed to deny the solace of faith to those who do not seek to deny others their freedoms and faiths.
Do you think that argument still holds true, or, as Sam Harris argues in The End Of Faith, is it time to recognize that all faith systems are based on superstition and are inherently damaging to the future of humanity?
My Soundtrack: Missing Pieces by Voxtrot on WOXY.
… but The Free Times is safe. Back in 2002 New Times Media, owner of Cleveland’s Scene and Village Voice Media, then owner of Cleveland’s Free Times got caught with their hands in the advertising-rate cookie jar. For a brief time the Free Times ceased publication but was resurected and sold as part of the deal engineered by the lawyers.
This morning comes the news that nearly three years later the deal has also been resurrected. According to the New York Times:
The company that publishes The Village Voice and five other alternative newspapers is to announce today an agreement to be acquired by New Times Media, the largest publisher in the market. The deal would create a chain of 17 free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million.
While this merger poses no immediate threat to the Free Times, it does put increased pressure on the publication to compete against the expanded editorial resources of the Scene.
My Soundtrack: Compliments by Bloc Party on WOXY.
My Soundtrack: Over And Over Again by Clap Your Hand And Say Yeah on WOXY.
Is your idea on how to fix our national economy worth $100,000? It could be. The ideas are pouring into Since Sliced Bread and one idea will be selected to win the $100,000 prize. Two runners-up will get $50,000 each. I’m going to give it a shot. The odds have got to be better than playing the lottery. What’s your idea?
There is no writer I admire more than Marge Piercy. I discovered her my junior year in college when I took Women’s Studies 101 for all the wrong reasons. We had to read an excerpt from her Women On The Edge Of Time. I finished it and went to the library to check out every book she’d written. The weekend flew by.
Piercy now has a newsletter and the following tips are from her So You Want To Write:
1. We live in a society in which the most heinous and embarrassing human behaviors are merely fodder for sitcoms and daily talk shows. What you may agonize about revealing might make the average reader yawn.
2. Revealing the truth as you see it might explain a person’s life in a way that makes their behavior far more explicable than covering it over.
3. Sometimes people really don’t mind being written about because you are enabling them to see their lives in a new and useful perspective.
4. Your job as a writer is to make people real. Cartoon characters and walk-ons don’t make a story or a memoir breathe. You’ve got to allow the reader to see a well-rounded picture of your important characters and that includes the contradictions in their personalities, all the surprising but often un flattering dualities that make each of us interesting and unique.
I’ve talked about this with other writers at workshops and just over beers. It’s a tough wall to breech. But if you don’t storm it, you’re lost.
My Soundtrack: The Lovers’ Rights by The Rosebuds on WOXY.
I remember a conservative friend of mine once taking a swipe at one of my political heros President Jimmy Carter. Carter once described himself as a nuclear physicist, my friend told me, when he had never gotten a PhD in Physics. Carter, I knew, was more of a nuclear physicists than some who had gotten that particular sheepskin.
As a graduate of and officer in Admiral Hymann Rickover’s nuclear Navy, Carter had passed courses and exams that would make most PhD candidates weep.
Now, similar charges of resume padding are being leveled at Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. According to the Associated Press:
The Roman Catholic diocese of Dallas is setting the record straight: Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has never been a Catholic.
A review of records for such sacraments as baptism, first Eucharist and confirmation found no evidence that Miers or anyone in her immediate family was Catholic, Bronson Havard, a spokesman for the diocese, said Friday.
I honestly don’t know what to think about this one. Perhaps Miers did worship with a Catholic congregation. No one checks credentials at the door and you can learn the motions pretty quickly if you sit in the back and pay attention. With all the valid and clear questions about Miers, this seem petty.
Is it possible that Havard or the Church has some axe to grind? I would hope not. Did the Catholic church feel that having a heretic nominated to the Supreme Court was unbearable? Perhaps.
On 8 November 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to his brother, Edgar Newton Eisenhower. In it, the Republican president took special notice of certain business interests in Texas and singled out Texas Oil millionaire (back when a million was worth something) H.L. Hunt for his brother’s attention. The president wrote:
Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this–in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it.
The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
As events are finally making very clear, the splinters are not any smarter today than they were 50 years ago.
Thanks to reader Cailin for quote.
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