Love your smell

25 days later

I have not written anything for 25 days. Things happened. Journeys traveled. Distances breached. Maybe one day, I will sit down in calm and write them down. Afterall, the road is long.

Rumours

The mills have been grinding non-stop on the latest video-ipod designs. Look at that. Touch screen technology. Screens that stretch across the entire device. Cool. Now just pray it's real, boys.

Can you smell my BO now?

"Get away from me, or this ball goes around your neck!"

The lawyers have it easy

Here's an actual e-mail exchange between 2 lawyers that circulated over the all-knowing internet.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 9:23 PM
To: William A. Korman
Subject: Thank you

Dear Attorney Korman,

At this time, I am writing to inform you that I will not be accepting your offer.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living in light of the work I would be doing for you. I have decided instead to work for myself, and reap 100% of the benefits that I sow.

Thank you for the interviews.

Dianna L. Abdala, Esq.

-----Original Message-----
From: William A. Korman
To: Dianna Abdala
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 12:15 PM
Subject: RE: Thank you

Dianna --

Given that you had two interviews, were offered and accepted the job (indeed, you had a definite start date), I am surprised that you chose an e-mail and a 9:30 PM voicemail message to convey this information to me. It smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional. Indeed, I did rely upon your acceptance by ordering stationary and business cards with your name, reformatting a computer and setting up both internal and external e-mails for you here at the office. While I do not quarrel with your reasoning, I am extremely disappointed in the way this played out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Will Korman

-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:01 PM
To: William A. Korman
Subject: Re: Thank you

A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so.

Again, thank you.

-----Original Message-----
From: William A. Korman
To: Dianna Abdala
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:18 PM
Subject: RE: Thank you

Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?

-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala
To: William A. Korman
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: Thank you

bla bla bla

First try

Photoshop

It runs on whisky

Great mod.

Comics

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, talks about comics and how different parts of the audience responds to them.

Gag Lovers: This group looks for classic cleverness in their comics. They don’t care that much about art, as long as it isn’t distracting. Nor do they care about the comic’s relevance to their life. “Funny is funny� would be their motto. They’re about 20% of the population at most.

Visual People: This group cares so much about the look of a comic that the writing becomes secondary. The people in this group would never admit that their sense of humor is influenced by the art, but their lists of favorite comics will always be the ones that are the most artistically accomplished. They’re about 20% of the population too.

Relevance People: This group cares the least about the art and cleverness of a comic. They look for comics that are relevant to their own lives. They want to know they’re not alone in their peeves and viewpoints. This group is the largest, probably 60% of the population.

If you substitute the word "comic" with "ad", I believe his comment still holds water.

You can make your ad funny. You can also make it look great. But you must make it relevant to the reader. Only then will you stand a chance of engaging them. And remember, people like comics and hate ads. It's double the challenge.

Lying Eyes

City girls just seem to find out early,
how to open doors with just a smile.
A rich old man and she won't have to worry.
She'll dress up all in lace and go in style.
Late at night a big old house gets lonely,
I guess every form of refuge has its price.
And it breaks her heart to think her love is only,
given to a man with hands as cold as ice.
So she tells him she must go out for the evening,
to comfort an old friend who's feeling down.
But he knows where she's going as she's leaving,
she’s headed for the cheating side of town.

On the other side of town a boy is waiting,
with fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal.
She drives on through the nice anticipating,
cause he makes her feel the way she used to feel.
She rushes to his arms, they fall together,
She whispers that it's only for awhile.
She swears that soon she'll be coming back forever,
she pulls away and leaves him with a smile.

She gets up and pours herself a strong one,
and stares out at the stars up in the sky.
Another night, it's gonna be a long one,
she draws the shade and hangs her head to cry.
She wonders how it ever got this crazy,
she thinks about a boy she knew in school.
Did she get tired or did she just get lazy?
She's so far gone she feels just like a fool.
My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things,
you set it up so well, so carefully.
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things,
you're still the same old girl you used to be.

You can't hide your lying eyes,
and your smile is a thin disguise.
I thought by now you'd realize,
there ain't no way to hide your lying eyes.
There ain't no way to hide your lying eyes.
Honey, you can't hide your lying eyes.

The Earth is melting

Must not be too thick

A smart use of space. Not bad. Not bad at all.

User requirements

Something tells me Lawrens and Florens will appreciate this.

Beware of forum posters!

The 2 dudes at Penny Arcade ran a game demo of Black and decided it was nonsense. But a guy thought differently and raved about it on a public forum. It would have been the usual forum trolling exchange till this turned up in the PA inbox.

Hey guys,

I interviewed for a guerilla marketing business in San Francisco that targeted web forums.

I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.

They had 12 people working there full time, and were hiring 10 more. You do the math. No wait, I'll do it for you: that's 880 posts a day (if minimum was met). However he said the better ones could do around 8 or 10 an hour. And they had different "verticals" so there was the sports guy, and the games guy, the hentai, excuse me I mean anime guy, etc.

But the most critical point was this: develop and integrate the identity. No random "HEY EB GAMES IS AWESOME BUY THIS" stuff.

Kinda spooky.

Didn't take the job. It was a fucking mill.

False profits

Came across this article about Multi-level Marketing. Author debunks the 10 myths of this legendary form of business structure that supposedly brings about financial independence and spiritual maturity. Riiiiight. MLM BS takes the cake, eats it and shoves it up the big a-hole in the sky.

Lie #1: MLM is a business offering better opportunities for making large sums of money than all other conventional business and professional models

Lie #2: Network marketing is the most popular and effective new way to bring products to market. Consumers like to buy products on a one-to-one basis in the MLM model

Lie #3: Eventually all products will be sold by MLM, a new form of marketing. Retail stores, shopping malls, catalogues and most forms of advertising will soon be rendered obsolete by MLM

Lie #4: MLM is a new way of life that offers happiness and fulfillment. It is a means to attain all the good things in life

Lie #5: MLM is a spiritual movement

Lie #6: Success in MLM is easy. Friends and relatives are the natural prospects. Those who love and support you will become your lifetime customers

Lie #7: You can do MLM in your spare time. As a business, it offers the greatest flexibility and personal freedom of time. A few hours a week can earn a significant supplemental income and may grow to a very large income making other work unnecessary

Lie #8. MLM is a positive, supportive new business that affirms the human spirit and personal freedom

Lie #9. MLM is the best option for owning your own business and attaining real economic independence

Lie #10: MLM is not a pyramid scheme because products are sold

What study does

What Jack needs

"You... You will always need something to fix."

Sarah, to her husband Jack, before she left for another man.

Baseball

Oh, such a beautiful girl... I mean sport.

This is how others see us

I found this thread in an ad forum talking about dog-walker ads.

Just so you know, dog-walker ads refer to ads done for awards sake. Sometimes, the ads are for imaginary clients. Worse times, they are for easy products or services where there is inherent drama. This is pure masturbation; It pleases only the person who created it.

Frogs

Here's an interesting article on frogs. Research shows frogs are sensitive to temperature changes in the environment. They display extreme distaste for hot climates and prove it by dying, sometimes one species at a time.

Now this runs in the face of the story of the boiling frog, which goes like this. Put a frog in a beaker of water. Boil the water under a slow flame and the frog does not jump out. This story compares frogs to people who swim in beakers and cook themselves. Or something like that. I think.

Enough about that. In America, frogs die because the temperature is rising.

Why Are These Frogs Croaking?
Massive die-offs in the American tropics are an early warning of the effects of global warming
By JEFFREY KLUGER

Hardy and plentiful as they seem, frogs are actually very frail things, with a semipermeable skin that leaves them vulnerable to even the slightest hiccup in their environment. So when entire species of brightly colored harlequin frogs started dying off in the cloud forests of Central and South America about 25 years ago, scientists suspected that something in the amphibians' ecosystems--they weren't sure what--had gone awry.

Now an international team of scientists think they've solved the mystery. Comparing changes in annual temperatures with the number of frog species spotted, they've documented for the first time a direct correlation between global warming and the extinction of about two-thirds of the 110 known species of harlequin frog.

The critters in question are favorites of scientists studying climate change. Quick and polychromatic, the frogs spend their days near stream banks, where their constant motion and vibrant hues make it easy for researchers to count them. Previous studies have shown that it's not heat alone that kills harlequins but also a pathogen--the chytrid fungus--that attacks their skin. The chytrid is actually a cool-weather organism, doing best at temperatures from 63°F to 77°F. Paradoxically, an effect of global warming is to increase cloud cover in the tropical forests, lowering daytime temperatures and making the frogs more vulnerable to fungal assault.

The most persuasive piece of evidence in the new study, led by J. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica and published in Nature, is a graph that shows both annual changes in average temperature and the number of frog extinctions per year on the same grid: the jagged lines track each other with eerie precision. Species die-offs follow warm years 80% of the time. With tropical air temperatures from 1975 to 2000 rising three times as fast as the 20th century average, things should only get worse.

Frogs are what scientists call an indicator species: particularly sensitive animals that are the first to go when the climate starts to change. Their extinction may increase pressure on government and industry to dial back greenhouse gases. The harlequins, after all, are only the beginning.