February 29, 2004

Where the Yetis Roam

YETI SPORTS from reader Steven T.

February 28, 2004

Dropshadows

I like them. Especially in CSS.

Abominable

God Hates Shrimp. Fear, ye crustacean eaters.

February 27, 2004

Garbage Truck Stopped With 2 Tons of Pot

And we have a winner for our headline writing contest mentioned below.

This story: "Garbage Truck Stopped With 2 Tons of Pot":

February 26, 2004, 8:29 PM EST

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. -- A garbage truck was stopped carrying more than two tons of marijuana north of Huachuca City, a Department of Public Safety official said.

The truck had been driving erratically late Tuesday, said DPS Sgt. Steve Tritz.

"It got my attention," Tritz said. "He was driving slow and failing to signal."

The driver, who identified himself as 28-year-old Brian Rivera Martinez, said he didn't know how to drive the truck.

When a drug-sniffing dog arrived, it alerted authorities to possible narcotics. DPS officers found 4,112 pounds of marijuana bundled in the area where trash would be carried.

Martinez and passenger, Michael Trejo Duran Sr., 38, were arrested on suspicion of transporting and possessing marijuana for sale. "

Deserves the headline of Will Benton at the University of Wisconsin:

Drug-sniffing dog can't tell difference between cannabis and narcotics

Droll, Will. Droll.

Cometh the Dark Star

Two more weeks:

Fri Mar 12 - Toad's Place - 300 York St, New Haven, CT - (203) 562-5589
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sat Mar 13 - Mulcahy's - 3232 Railroad Ave., Wantagh, NY - (516) 826-6857
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thu Mar 18 - Mexicali Blues Cafe - 1409 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck, NJ - (201) 833-0011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fri Mar 19 - Mexicali Blues Cafe - 1409 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck, NJ - (201) 833-0011

Signs of decay for old media

The irony of a post-bust economy is that the wild-eyed predictions made during the previous boom actually come true.

The 1920s did eventually lead to broad ownership of equities.

The 1960s scientific revolutions in agriculture, medicine, synthetics, and,yes, "plastics", did lead to "better living through chemicals".

So now we have at hand the 90s boom, or the echo of the 90s boom anyway, in which new media trumps old.

When the head of the Washington Post's political reporting group feels compelled to deny that:

"Mr. Drudge does not have better sources than most reporters."

You know that a) it's not true and b) the establishment are in trouble.

Jeff Jarvis predicts the death of broadcast following the clipping of Howard Stern's wings, and I think that's about right.

Newspapers are increasingly failing to serve their business or editorial consituencies. I have certainly seen that in the classifieds segment where I toil; and in the information market where I consume. Can anybody argue that the NYTimes' homepage seems fresh and relevant to the times?

Old media crumbles and the new medium springs forth. Funny to see 1997 vindicated and 2002 proven wrong so quickly.

What a roster!

The Grateful Dead's ROck and ROll Hall of Fame Roster includes 12 names. That must be a record for inductee : performers at any one time ratio (excepting of course Spinal Tap).

Headline Writing Prize

Have at it. Entries to "blog@cenedella.com".

24 Hours Notice

I didn't realize one day's notice was the prevailing practice among corporate bigs:

Sueltz told CRN that she signed with Salesforce.com Tuesday night and informed Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy Wednesday morning. Sueltz will start her new job Thursday as executive vice president of the company and president of Salesforce.com's Technology Marketing and Systems organization.

Sun, like Disney, seems tired after 20 years of same ol', same ol' leadership.

Great Moments in Corporate Honesty

For the record, I think this story is apocryphal (or do I mean exaggerated)?:

"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

It is fantastic what fortunes were won and lost on the day of the "look and feel" ruling against Apple and in favor of Microsoft.

UPDATE: Interesting use of consortium in Apple's early marketing:

A few months later, after conferring with a number of consultants who understood the college market, a plan began to emerge. One of the words that the consultants reiterated was "consortium"; it seemed like colleges loved to band together into various consortiums. We knew that the paucity of software at launch would be a barrier to initial acceptance, but maybe not if we could get the colleges to form a Macintosh consortium, where members received steeply discounted Macs for students and faculty. All we had to do is sign up a few of the most prestigious schools, and many of the rest would follow.

February 26, 2004

Complete Piker

A complete piker was only able to get 6 or 7 hundred points on this game.

I got 858.2.

Quitter.

p.s. haha my friends in the UK, you will now lose ANOTHER day of productivity!!

Lau Lau Pig!!

WAIKIKI WALLY'S is where I will be Friday night for Lau Lau Pig and Mar-tikis.

Very early days

This self-promoting fellow has very interesting ideas on the emergence of RSS feeds as content aggregators.

Interestingly enough, and probably good for my business, the professional punditry community seems to be off in its little eddies of predictions and extrapolations for the future rather than looking at what services are actually changing customers lives today.

Three years from now they will have caught on to what we were doing in 2004, but then it will be too late for them to catch up.

How Not To Handle Opportunity Knocking

Bunker down and try to hide. Look, your life is changed forever already. Dramatically. Why not make something good and interesting out of it instead of skulking in a distant corner?

Bartman could deal gracefully with is notoriety -- "Dunk Bartman" for charity; appear on Rosie and Oprah; discuss how to overcome life's setbacks; show up with good humor at the restaurant for the ball destruction.

Instead, the meathead is hiding away and now will never surpass or transcend his ignomy.

A Call To Arms

I find the period inside the quotation mark rule silly, dated and confusing. Rise up with me, my fellow scriveners, and overthrow this tyrant! "We have nothing to lose but", I'll say," our chains!"

February 25, 2004

Get yer Aerons!

The Last Great Internet Bubble Auction is taking place and the assets of MP3.com will be going on the block.

I'd sure like to get my hands on some of those Aerons....

Silver lining

Drezner rather sensibly comes up with the lemonade from lemons angle on the story:

I'm serious. Bush's decision today will advance the rights of gay Americans beyond anything anyone is predicting. In 15 years, most States will allow gay marriage -- thanks, ironically, to George W. Bush.

Actually, he's right.

February 24, 2004

Put your money where your mouth is

I could not be more strongly against my party's and my president's support of the anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution. (Sure, I'll note that the quislings over on the Democratic side of the aisle are hardly more courageous in their defense of equal rights for homosexuals). Nonetheless, that can not excuse the Party of Lincoln and the Party of Reagan -- the party that freed the slaves and rid the world of Soviet slavery -- from turning its back on our fellow citizens.

I am deeply disappointed. The only good I could make out of it was to become a Grass Roots donor to the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that remains committed to freedom in all its splendor.

I recommend that you do so also.

UPDATE: Reviewing my credit card bill last night, I found a donation to the Republican National Committee. I reversed the charge and gave that to the Log Cabins too.

Clash of the Titans in Reality

So who's the better business guy.

The guy paid to appear on TV, or the guy writing checks to be on the idiot box?

Untethered!

Even though I enjoyed The Neighborhood from MCI's service and the pricing was better than home and LD combined, I've decided to unplug. De-tether. Un-connect.

So no more landline, no more tele-marketing calls, one less answering machine to deal with.

I'm wire free baby!

4,757!

My latest Amazon.com reviewer rank.

Digital scents

One of you, dear Readers, wrote in the other day about inquiring about the name of this digital olfactorial stimulation enterprise. Well, the Stinkbot company was called DigiScents, and that should fulfill your bubble nostalgia quota for the day.

Turing machine seeks single human for chat

The Beeb reports dirty-talking computers fooling their IM companions.

Hmmm, another possibility for using technology in customer service?

February 23, 2004

Big concert

Don't miss the Oratorio Society of New York performing March 4th. "Mass in time of war", hmmmm?

Cool interactive electoral map

From an Edwards for Prez site.

Japanese resources in NYC

Lots of restaurants especially (thanks to Anil Dash).

Customer Service Blogging

Blogging for Business: Leveraging Customer Service using Blogs

In addition to my nightjob of keeping Stone fresh, clean, and irrelevant, last summer I launched a web-based job search service for $100,000+ executives called The Ladders and with sites at www.salesladder.com, www.mktgladder.com and www.financeladder.com . No, not a headhunter. Not really a job board, either. If you said a job spider you’d be closer, but not quite.

Whatever you call it, what we do is e-mail over 800 all-new, open $100K+ jobs to our subscribers each Monday. You can imagine that for busy people or out-of-work people this is a fairly useful service. Our business idea is pretty simple:

1. It’s always free for hiring companies to post their bona fide $100K+ jobs to our site
2. It’s always free for job-seekers to get job leads with information on industry, title, and location
3. It’s $25 / month for job-seekers to get full job details, links to the company’s hiring page, etc.

And our sites are:

SalesLadder for $100K+ sales executives.
MktgLadder for $100K+ marketing executives.
FinanceLadder for $100K+ finance executives.

In order for this to make any sense, you’ll understand that we need to have a lot of people using the service. But it’s also important that people feel, especially given how painful the job loss / job search process can be, that there’s somebody on the other side of the screen that actually gives a damn. (Despite the fact that similar “real world” out-placement services can cost $5,000 or more, we’re expected to provide reasonably similar service levels at a much lower price.)

So it is important that when we speak with customers:

1. We present a human face.
2. There’s an immediacy and relevance to what we’re saying to people’s lives.
3. We don’t talk like a corporation, a bot, or an automated customer service system.
4. We provide internet “training wheels”, technological sympathy, and amiable support that are reasonably easy to follow.
5. We reply quickly in addition to relevantly – we always want to reply within 24 hours, preferably within 4.

Our customers range in age from their late 20s to late 60s; and from sophisticated web surfers with a solid grasp of information technology tools to those who are not; like one kindly old gentleman who wrote me: “Marc, you say I should cut and paste the link below, but you don’t tell me how to cut and paste…. How do I do this???” [We finally hit on the idea of telling him to re-type it. That worked.]

So when we started, I simply cranked out the customer service emails: 100 per week; then 200; then 300; in addition to designing the site, running the business, etc.

But then it rose to 500 per week, 600, 700… it became obvious that as we grew – we now have more than 43,000 subscribers – handling these mano a mano wasn’t going to work.

Further, it wasn’t too long after we started before the tougher questions began rolling in:

“I’m a 58 year-old experienced salesman with 25 years in medical product sales, but I can’t get a job because of my age.” -- For us youngsters out there – I’m 33 – I have been shocked at how consistently and persistently this comes up across all sections of the country from people 50 and over. It’s a real problem.

“I’d like to switch from medical device sales to something more service-oriented.”

“What’s a reasonable base salary for an Enterprise Software salesperson in Texas?”

I could’ve just blown these off, but it seemed interesting and an opportunity to further understand our community’s problems -- there’s a real need for this type of information and communication out there. And since I know that the internet together is smarter than each of us apart, I thought I’d put it to work for my business…

So we came up with the idea of launching a customer service blog – as far we know, the first one on the Internet – though keep your eyes peeled for the “UPDATE” below as I’ll inevitably get an email pointing out a prior inventor!

We thought a blog would enable us to be immediate, personal, AND scalable in answering the influx of customer service emails. It would also be useful for producing a moderated community and forming the basis for further personal interaction down the line.

We launched Ask Marc on January 2nd of this year, using the superb MovableType software, which Stone is also based on. I’ve made seventy posts so far covering everything from pure “customer service” issues to the age discrimination problem to the shameless plug and the occasional inspirational quote.

So, we are two months into our experiment with blogging as a customer service tool, and how do I feel about it as a business tool?:

A blog enables us to be more interactive. Relevant and timely asides or tying the day’s posts into current events give a much “fresher” feel to customer service.

Blogging is effortless, but time-consuming. MovableType’s system is of course, cheap, flexible, easy, and rugged. Which gives me few excuses for not having ever more content and information on the blog.

A blog shows an anonymous internet audience that real people are participating – the range of questions, styles, and vocabulary of the audience shows the breadth and depth of your userbase, and enables customers to identify to a greater degree with you and their fellow readers.

A blog enables you to give long detailed answers in short fast emails. Once a post is written, it can be used again and again as you point back to it.

A blog magnifies the patience, wit, and humanity that one can bring to bear on the repetitive and routine customer service interactions. It’s easier to be friendly and funny once in a while, and keep using that response, than to be that way all the time.

As we are an innovator in our field, and we’re asking people to behave in slightly different ways, the blog has enabled us to provide customers who have detailed questions or want much more information to get long-format answers that would be inappropriate for the typical visitor.

It’s also enabled us to try other fun features such as our interview with Google’s Head of Vertical Sales.

A blog makes it clear that a human is on this side of the screen. The rolling daily timestamps and immediacy give a human “presence” that is usually lacking in the customer service experience

The blog provides fantastic credibility, because the blog accurately reflects our deeper commitment to, and grappling with, the problem of the $100K+ job hunt.

And some of the less than glowingly positive aspects thus far:

The honesty of the blogging world does not translate well into customer interactions. In contrast to political or cultural blogging, in which one is expected to post the tough questions asked by fellow intellectual combatants, and self-fisk if necessary, my early experiments with putting up the good AND the bad comments kind of turned people off. As in love, there’s such a thing as being too honest.

We still have to connect the right question to the right answer, and that can either be done automatically (quicker but less accurate) or by hand. We’ve chosen to go with “by hand” for now…

A pointer to a blog entry still feels a little less warm than a personal reply – “I’ve answered the same question for your fellow reader Janet over here….”

One area of disappointment has been the lack of other relevant blogs, websites, groups, and advice sites with which to interact and cross-link, both on a permanent and on a daily basis.

Daily comments expire – there’s only so long you can direct folks back to “that answer I wrote back in ‘03”.

So that’s our experience so far. It’s certainly not the last word on the field, but maybe the beginning of a new way for customers to interact with companies in a way that’s more human, more relevant, and more… fun!

I can be reached at blog@cenedella.com (or blog@salesladder.com) and I look forward to any thoughts you might have to share about how we can do better!

OK, back to the jobs….

Aggregating content

I couldn't agree more with Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of NYTimes Digital:

And there's nothing wrong with that, but in order for a medium to take off, it needs to have a group of professionals who are compensated and a business model underneath that can support that professional class. And what I was saying is that we may be on the cusp of that happening. To be honest, most of the Web content businesses that have survived the dot.com bust are Web content businesses that trade on phase two attributes of sorting and aggregating existing content, and making that content available through an easy and universal way--through Internet. The tools, the technology, and the competencies may be coming into shape to create something new.

As you Stoners now, my other gig -- SalesLadder.com -- aggregates $100K+ jobs from all over the internet and sends them to our subscribers weekly. (There's also MktgLadder and FinanceLadder for those of you so inclined).

Big News for a certain Stone contributor

Dow Jones to Acquire Alternative Investor Group for $85 Million, Bolstering Coverage of Venture Capital and Private Equity Markets.

February 22, 2004

Where's the heat?

Microsoft's stock price is basically unchanged in 6 years (graph represents 6/22/98 to 2/22/04). At what point do shareholders get angry with minority management Gates (10%) and Ballmer (4%), who have fittered away cash on expensive diversions such as Xbox, MSN, MSNBC, etc., and turn the reins over to professionals, like, say, Carly Fiorina?

Nader nadir

Jeff Jarvis is Google-bombing the election spoiler.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,

All the facts you wanted to know about Lorem Ipsum from lipsum.com:

"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?"

Sounds like he knew from blogging!

Life and Death of Blogs

The formerly ubiquitous Elizabeth Spiers seems to have promoted herself into oblivion. Could one of our readers with Lexis / Nexis do a quick comparison of the number of times Spiers was mentioned in the national press during her Gawker days versus her now "big media" New York magazine placement?

The style, the structure, the look and feel of her new home seem to have none of the energy, zip or excitement of the old catty ways and days.

Busy bee

Dave Winer is cranking out posts at about one an hour on a Sunday morning. Impressing or depressing?

Kingdom Not Aware of US Democracy Initiative, Says Prince Saud

I like to read Arab News , the "Middle East's English language daily", for its insight into the Arab world, or at the very least, the anglophone chunk of that world.

Over the past year and a half, articles have turned from ‘Bush is riding a tiger with hawks around him’, 'The United States seems to speak with only one diplomatic voice these days, and it is brutish and loud.', and Imran blames US policy for extremism to less self-confident, more questioning fare such as 'Democracy for Arabs? Thanks, but... ' and, my favorite recent headline, 'Kingdom Not Aware of US Democracy Initiative, Says Prince Saud'.

The tone has gone from strident anti-Westernism to uncertain, though still certainly snotty, carping and critic-in-the-box sniping at US efforts that nonetheless lack forcefulness, attractiveness, or persuasiveness. This change is revealing and relevatory. We have taken the fight out of the pro-dictator, anti-liberty forces, and we have the opportunity, in this vacuum, for setting the questions of this century for all the Arab world. We're only partially blowing it in Iraq today, which is darn good, and at present trends, it looks like we're odds-on to have a democratic and free Iraq in the next five years.

It underscores the importance of our revised and bold foreign policy.

Problems with D&Y

While Stone scored 63%, our C'ville COrrespondent, a true Southerner, scored 66% Dixie. Which leads one to believe that the scoring aint up to snuff (or grits).

February 21, 2004

Lovely People, In Love, Getting Married

Acres and acres of photos of wonderful Americans, in love, getting hitched on City Hall steps in San Francisco.

OK, for now we'll ignore the fact that just about probably all these folks would despise my libertarian Republican politics and pro-defense stance, which really isn't the issue. The issue is that we are a nation of laws and not men (or women, or men-n-men or women-n-women).

Fine, there's no doubt that the Founding Fathers personally were actively, both personally and in their political capacities, against homosexuality. But then, they were in favor of using leeches to cure ailments, against having women have the vote, and so forth. They would probably also be against cheap beer on Sundays, women's soccer , amplified guitars and strip clubs, all of which we seem to be doing just fine with now that we have them in the 21st century.

But given the absence of illegality in the underlying acts, thankfully pushed away over the past three decades, what legal barrier should remain to punish adults for what is, after all, a discovery, not chocie?

These are beautiful people with hopes, dreams, enthusiasms, and loves. And we should embrace that in its multitude forms.

63% Dixie

On the Yankee or Dixie quiz, which is kind of funny as I have spent perhaps 4 weeks of my life total in the Southlands.

February 20, 2004

New Economics

Instapundit notes that his wife's free giveaway of her book as a download hasn't hurt her book's used price on Amazon, and that further:

"People's willingness to make donations, sometimes sizable, in support of things they can get for free is something that has surprised me about blogging, and suggests that the portrayal of human behavior I got in Econ 101 was incomplete."

There is something very profound here, in the way that the internet has created products made out of nothing but bits and bytes, for which we pay in nothing but bits and bytes, and we take delivery in bits and bytes. Human economic activity is always the mixing of raw materials with human physical activity -- mining ore is obvious on one end of the scale, but singing an aria, reading a palm, recommending a stock, or signing an insurance agreement are perhaps less obvious on the other.

WTC Memorial

Here's the one I would have voted for....

February 19, 2004

Kittens, Babes and Black Holes

Another ladmag from Britain? No, it's Yahoo! News' Most Emailed Photos.

Reader mail

Readers -- I'm bored. Please send me mail like you sometimes do from Denmark, Finland, the UK, and all over the USA.

What language does your internet speak?

Also a perma-link here at Stone, Global Internet Statistics informs us that 35.6% of the web is now English-speaking. This used to be 80% back in the day, and think even last year was close to 50-50.

Handy telemarketing guide

For dinner calls.

I'm actually considering ditching my landline phone entirely. Friends have to good effect, and I'm just paying MCI $73 / month for nothing, really.

Another Year Passing

Nope, doesn't look like I'll make it back to clothingoptional rave in the desert for people wealthy enough to afford a week in the dessert yet still be resentful about it Man again this year.

Bummer.

An Easy Way to Keep Yourself Handy

Barcoding Yourself is easy, and can save you extra dollars at the supermarket checkout.

Sometimes it's tough...

To keep it straight...

Exactly who is looking down on whom?

C'ville Correspondent

Our new Correspondent in C'Ville weighs in:

Check this out, however-- http://www.cavalierdaily.com/lead.asp?pid=1110
Virginia's General Assembly is actually considering this, and it passed its
first legislative hurdle yesterday. I can't figure out these hard-core Virginia religious Republicans at all -- why not leave this alone? There is nothing unlawful or, according to my understanding, particularly dangerous about this drug. The national party appears to be waking up somewhat to the reality that birth control and abortion are here to stay, but these local guys just won't.
They left out the best quote from this lunatic (I think)--I heard it on the radio this morning. I can't seem to find the whole quote anywhere, which is a damn shame. I was eating breakfast with my kids, and I hear something
like "Universities should not be giving this morning after sex pill garbage to women just they can end up being the love canal of some fraternity playboys." When I find the actual quote I will get it to you.

Anyhow, this news from Virginia makes us look like stupid hicks, which we are not.

Have a lovely day--

CC

Peggy Noonan on Bush

Via WSJ, perhaps the best egghead comment I've ever read:

Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" He's responsible. He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. Bush ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy.

It's the difference between words and deeds. Great men are always of the Deed variety, though once a century -- Churchill, Lincoln, Jefferson -- we get a twofer.

Much like the Duke professor who mistakes his colleagues' volume and quantity and output of words with intelligence (in fact, I'd warrant that an IQ survey of professors compared to those in thier college graduating class would show them dim-witted in addition to being intellectual sycophants), the folks who contruct word towers as a way of walling themselves off from the essential reality of events mistake the fantasies in thier head for success in the actual world.

February 18, 2004

'Oh my goodness, look how fat her ankles are!'

Fertile women judge other women's looks more harshly.

Dean Out

AP reports "Dean to End His Campaign".

I never thought much of his political chops, as the skills required to run a 98% white, homogeneous collection of rural hamlets are poor preparation for the extended interest groups, ethnicities, lobbies and caucuses of an enormous country.

I didn't find the Iowa concession speech that wacky though, and anybody viewing it outside the context of shock jock radio or Drudge (and i think it's interesting the extent to which Drudge made this, and to an increasing extent, a number of other Presidential stories) would, I think, agree, that it was nothing more loopy than a pep rally. We are captives of our caricatures, though, and Dean is Mean / Mad How provided more than enough other loopy fodder to make this story stick.

From a political historian's perspective, what an amazing comet across the firmament!

The 1,000 Styles of Rumsfeld

Fear, Evildoers!

February 12, 2004

Another #1 for Stone

We are the top search result for Gretchen Morgensen, the New York Times business reporter.

Gosh, that's a little bit unfair. I mean, I slam her work on this one piece and now we're the top search result for her if any of her colleagues, etc., search for her on Google?? She has a large corpus of work and I'm certain has invested a whole bunch of time in her career, so why is my off-hand, though still valid, criticism of her the defining entry in the world's most used search engine?

Gretchen -- if you read this, feel free to contact me!!

By the way, is there a term for all the odd phrases that you've become the #1 result on Google for? Here at Stone, we are #1 for:

Worst Album Covers
karis jagger spanish class
beat the penguin

and a whole bunch of others.....

Email me at blog@cenedella.com!

Kerry Kaput?

DRUDGE REPORT breaks another presidential intern story. I'd say given his track record it's 2-1 in favor of this being the truth.

Most compelling counter-argument: malevolent egotist General Clark is flogging it as well (and if he really believed it, why drop out?)

$100K+ Jobs

Our sites focused on $100K+ jobs continue to boom:

FinanceLadder for finance jobs...
SalesLadder for sales jobs, and...
MktgLadder for marketing jobs!

We now have over 40,000 subscribers and send out over 800 all-new jobs that pay over $100,000 / year each week.

THe internet rocks!

Worster Album Covers Ever II

Many thanks to co-conspirator Izzengez, Nick D., and readers Mobius, Antonio S., Antoon H., Nick D., David C., James S., Katharina K., Lisa L., Howard O., Ryan the Snowsuit, Mr. BaliHai, and Todd T.. You are all very disturbed people with horrible taste in albums. Thank you.

And now..... The Worster Album Covers Ever...




Anthology? That's depressing.







Millie is the Queen of Worst Album Covers. The title of this one is "Back to the Sh*t".


And can you believe Amazon lists it?








Yep, Amazon's got this one too.


I hope she washed her hand after the shoot above.


Reader Mobius has a follow-up post on the Bert-like appearance of Mille Jackson elsewhere.

Looks like one facet to me.



I actually kind of liked the track "Do It Roger".


Quick-thinking reader Corina R. has found Jeff for sale on eBay here.






This one proclaims "Satan has been paralyzed."








And now... pre-order The Worst Album Covers Ever at Amazon today!

And check out $100K+ jobs at TheLadders.com here.

UPDATE: And now..... Worstest Album Covers Ever III !!

New Site Tweaks

Put up a lot more Google AdSense ads, as they seem to be pretty relevant (amusingly enough, showing Grateful Dead and personals ads right now -- I guess based on posts on Spring Street Networks -- a company I've invested in that competes with Match, FriendFinder and the like -- and the DSO argument below). I've scrapped most of the affiliate and eBay / Amazon links, and moved the Google ads from the sidebar into the main column in the archives.

Pretty interesting!

I Want to Fly a Helicopter, Not Look At A Bunch Of Crazy Dials

I can appreciate that sentiment:

"A helicopter has about 40 different instruments. I suppose there's a chance that I'll be curious about a couple of them someday, but for now, they're just getting in the way of the view. In fact, all that blinky-blinky nonsense seems downright dangerous. "

February 11, 2004

I'm a Bee man myself

AOK asks "Which is your favorite non-sport sporting event, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show or the National Spelling Bee?"

February 10, 2004

Uber

38 posts in one day for instapundit. shocking.

The deceased groom, a former policeman identified as Eric, was not present at the ceremony.

Vows from the grave. Wonderful in a way, but very sad too for this poor woman.

He Stole My Weed!

Dumb.

Hmmm, time for a movie

Luckily, you don't have to decide "What To Rent".

Oh yeah, you say YOUR mom is batty, huh???

Not as batty as this poor loser who STILL lives with his mom.

February 09, 2004

Deader than Dead?

the debate ignites:

Marc,

DSO is a good band, they sound sweet, and do infact hit ALOT of great rifts, and do sound ALOT like the DEAD....I was very impressed, and have seen them numerous times - BUT......

They are a "knockoff band" plain and simple. Much like Beatlmania back in the day, (my parents trucked me into the Winter Garden Theater to witness alot of good energy) - but they simply were not the Beatles.

DSO is a clone of the original. The original DEAD = pre-78 is infact the best music in my opinion ever layed out on mulitrack. I am a avid DAT compiler - and have over the years amassed close to 600 shows thru old- style, (pre-internet) trading.(I converted 80% of my tapes and DATS's to CD's) I will be happy to lay on you some sweet 73-74 era stuff, but pretty please let me know you do not think the 1972-1973-1974 Grateful Dead are less talented than their "clones."

Once again, if DSO gives you good energy - thats all that matters. I am happy you found some good music as a release - but pretty please let me know if you agree that vintage REAL - is far better than CLONED copies.

Andy

*******************

Andy –

Thanks for the detailed rebuttal!! 

OK, OK 1972 – 1977 is unique Dead, and irreproducible. But by mid-78 you have Jerry warbling, and sounding really rough by 80.

I watched a New Year’s concert from, I think, 79, and the whole band was just not as on fire as DSO.

Now, in DSO’s favor:
Rob can sing without making you cringe on Black-Throated Wind and Around & Around. I used to hate A&A and it is one of my new favorites.
Any late 80s or 90s song is better by DSO. Touch of Grey is simply superb.
Lisa (“Donna”) sings on key, and can belt it out.
Originial setlist shows are toe-to-toe with Dead classics and present unique sounds that the Dead never did.
John is super-amazing in his own right; when doing “Jerry” he is 90% of great Jerry. But you have to admit, sometimes Jerry was only 90% (or 50%) of great Jerry.

Overall, DSO did not innovate the sound, the music, etc., and the Dead will always be the George Washington of the Music. But we’ve had great presidents since GW, and DSO are Dead II.

I strongly resisted the entire concept, but have come to believe that DSO are just a different cut from the same slab that gave us the Original Dead.

May there be many many more to follow in future years!

WAE,

Marc

25.219

Escape!.... to bed.

I Aced This

Should that be a concern?

February 08, 2004

Batto de pengin

Since the old link for the penguin-bashing game isn't working, here's new one, which claimes the game is called "Pya!" However, the measurement scale is different, so here's a new score to beat: 1214.7.

February 06, 2004

Faker

Spot The Fake Smile

Red and Blue

Unlike Ebony and Ivory living together on your keyboard, red books and blue books don't get along on the bookshelf.

Apologentsia

Reader Edward writes in, triumphantly, with IHT's Not everyone got it wrong on Iraq's weapons.

"'We were all wrong," David Kay, the Bush administration's former top weapons sleuth in Iraq, recently told members of Congress after acknowledging that there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I, for one, was not. I did my level best to demand facts from the Bush administration to back up their allegations regarding Iraq's WMD and, failing that, spoke out and wrote in as many forums as possible in an effort to educate the publics of the United States and the world about the danger of going to war based on a hyped-up threat."

Now I'm willing to 'fess up when 'fessing up is required, but I don't believe Ritter deserves our admiration.

In addition to being the author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America", hardly the title for a book by a reasonable man, Ritter is the most loathsome of apologists:

"TIME: You've spoke about having seen the children's prisons in Iraq. Can you describe what you saw there?

Ritter: The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children — toddlers up to pre-adolescents — whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace. "

My definition of reasonable man does not contemplate someone who coddles the murder of children in the pursuit of his own fame.

February 05, 2004

Gay Marriage

Andrew Sullivan points to this gent who writes "Why I Support Gay Marriage, and Why I Will Never Be Angry At Those Who Do Not".

Hmmm. I suppose I'm a little farther along the spectrum. I'm not angry per se, but I don't much understand how somebdoy's value in life, their relationships, their church and their beliefs is threatened by gay marriage.

If the answer is that it's different from the marriage you've known all your life, well then so are Islamic marriages, arranged marriages and Hollywood marriages. Each of these should present deeply troubling quandaries for the propeonent of classical, monogamous, romantic marriage.

If your own values are weak enough to be threatened by another's profession of love, then your values aren't quite strong, by my standards, in the first place.

And if heterogeneity in marriage bonds among adults is your stumbling block, then there are certianly far more fertile fields for complaint than two nice guys named Mike trying to have a little home in the 'burbs.

Just a reminder

Clarice Jensen is still a coward:

Bush-Rice ? Give me a f**king break, rich boy. By the way, most educated people do not find the term "third world" acceptable when referring to his or her travels... I suppose the dog food business plays by a different set of standards.
Posted by: clarice on December 1, 2003

and hasnt responded to any of my emails...

Republicans get out your checkbooks

Dr. Dean says "Wisconsin Is Last Stand":

"The entire race has come down to this: We must win Wisconsin," Dean wrote to supporters, saying he needed to raise $700,000 by Sunday to launch a new television advertisement on Monday in major markets there."

It would be a shame to lose such an unelectable opponent. Time to dig deep!