Unemployment Will Make A Man Do Weird Things

The last time I was on an extended unemployment stretch, I packed up everything and moved from Missouri to Florida. After I found a room to rent in a weird guy's house, I found a job as a landscaper. Actually, we mainly just cut lawns in the heat. It only lasted for a few months, but I have a tendency to romanticize that brief employment as the best job I ever had. The boss and owner of the company, a former timeshare salesman, was a thick-accented Jersey guy who always had a joint hanging from his lips. After we were done with a yard and it looked exceptionally nice, he'd say, "It's cake!" Or he'd announce as we approached a lawn, "Make it cake, boys!" I came to interpret that direction in a way that is best interpreted by the following diagram:

So, now that I'm unemployed again, I apply for jobs online and send cover letters and resumes to the people who hire people like me, and when I run out of those, I go to the yard and work on some long-neglected corner that needs a cakemaker's touch. Then I come in and check the inbox or send out another query letter for that damned book that keeps collecting rejection letters. Or I'll mess with the design of one of my websites. Sometimes I'll even mess with the whole purpose of one of my websites. And then sometimes I'll just get a really crazy idea like building a mock cake with a landscaping theme.

Click it. It's effing huge.

Admit it. It looks delicious.

Calle del Alfabeto

Bloggers, have you ever posted a video and then gone back to the post months later to find that the video has been removed by the original poster? Happens all the time here and this blog is littered with empty YouTube frames that make those posts pointless.

In some cases, it's a music publisher claiming copyright infringement, which in this day and age, is the dumbest move a music publisher/record label could make. When people are stealing your music from LimeWire and a host of other places, why not allow your music a little free play that doubles as promotion for your artist? Maybe someone sees this video of Prince (being painfully slow-hosted via two or three servers, with the original host being in Romania) and goes out and buys some Prince music on iTunes.

It could happen. Now please enjoy the funky fun of the Minnesota Vikings' most famous fan before it gets removed again.

Prince - Alphabet Street - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

My Favorite Propaganda Poster of All Time

I turned this into a refrigerator magnet, because it is so awesome. Simple and to the point: If you're not in a carpool, you're a Nazi.

The iPad: Who Needs It?

Steve Jobs, who owns a time machine, recently pitched his new invention to a bunch of 1960s era ad men.

Mas Grande

I Want to Play That Phone

I've never liked Eric Clapton. He's one of those guys who's been overhyped so long everyone is just SUPPOSED to like him, much like Springsteen or Lady Gaga. Actually, I think Gaga might have more talent than both of those clowns put together. But I've got to hand it to T-Mobile, this is a cool phone.

People Get Ready, There's a Train A-Comin'

It appears the President will be down in Florida tomorrow to announce a bunch of federal dollars coming our way for a high-speed rail connecting Orlando and Tampa.

That's cool. I've always wanted America to get a decent rail system. (An old post that continues to ring true for too many on this blog is "Amtrack Sucks.")

But I wish we lived in the 1930s, when if a President announced a monster huge job like this, it'd get done in a year. As it is, projects like these have gone the way of jobs in just about every other industry in this country, including advertising. Studies. Meetings. Holdups. Overruns. Redos. More meetings. Another meeting. Focus groups. Surveys. A poll. More studies. Put it on hold for a while. Reconvene. Look at it. Have more meetings. Talk in circles. Too many people trying to justify why they are involved in the project and fighting with one another over who has control.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Yes, You Got My Attention. Freak.

I'm seeing this guy way too much in the sidebars of major sites. And he scares me. Are those his lower teeth? Did he have nostril enlarging surgery? Are those safety goggles? I trust he's CG and not a real person.

I'm not clicking on this shit, no matter what you're selling.

Certain Side Effects May Include Screaming at People

Anyone who smokes, or who has ever smoked, knows quitting smoking is a state of mind. That's why smokers always say, "I can quit anytime I want." They just don't want to yet. Or they haven't psyched themselves up enough. Or they're planning on drinking tonight and cigarettes go great with alcohol. Or things are stressful and they know a smoke will calm their nerves. They were going to quit when cigarettes went over $5 a pack, but that day is long gone. They tried the gum, the patches, the slowly-weaning-themselves-off-method, but they didn't succeed. Even the nightmare-inducing, make you fart and barf drug from Pfizer didn't do the trick. And none of those edgy, million-dollar scare and shame tactics do a damn thing.

They hold to their excuses. They buy into the gimmicks. But they're just chicken-hearted, gutless pussies. I know because I smoke. And I'm psyching myself up for the day I lay them down with this mock ad. It will be my motto to myself.

FACT: Cold-turkey is the most effective stop-smoking method.

It's Hard Out There for a Pimp

I think every unpublished writer has questioned the value and necessity of the literary agent. Nathan P. Superagent is here to explain.

Master of Internet Marketing, Nay - ROCKSTAR

It looks like Daniel Day Lewis in a velvet top coat and high collared shirt, playing to a rabid Victorian crowd. Good sir, it would not at all be a haphazard conjecture to venture that you have indeed rocked this assemblage with a most impressive display of marketing.

Full Sail University, a vocational school for the film, recording and gaming industries, is seeking to make itself into a breeding ground for marketing rockstars. As if we needed more of those.

And if you're going with that font, I expect an umlaut somewhere.

This had to have been created in-house, and it is not a very good calling card as to what they will be teaching you.

Oh Yeah - He Just Said That

While today is the day that we all like to recall the wonderful, dreamy things MLK said, let's not forget that he had the title "Reverend" in front of his name.

It's Got a Great Beat and It Makes Me Buy Cars

Too often, advertisers for cars don't even try anymore. Find a song you like and put some images up. Done. For instance, Spoon for Jaguar. Or more currently, Phoenix's "1901" being used by Cadillac. Lincoln is triple dipping these days, putting Shiny Toy Guns cover of "Major Tom" to work for the MKZ, Cat Power's cover of "Space Oddity" for the MKS, and here's one for the MKT, trying to get into the heads of people who remember this song.



It is a good song, but this cover by Sia is a little on the anemic side.

Here's the real one, from The Church, 1989. I'm glad these long forgotten Aussie boys are making some coin from Lincoln, but I wish I'd never seen their video for the song now. They're doing that gross, 80s stare at the camera thing while telling a disjointed story about a girl walking around with a gold frame, a style perfected by their far more successful countryman Michael Hutchence.



Anyway, now that that trip through the glory days of Australian rock is over, I don't think this sells a single car.

Because The Four Horsemen Won't Be Bringing Food

Glenn Beck is the new spokesman for Food Insurance, a company that wants to make sure you survive the coming tribulations with your bellies filled. And they're coming, Beck warns in a video on the company's site. He's got these little backpacks for his whole family and his staff, and they look all Swiss Army or Red Cross-like. Two weeks of freeze-dried goodness for as little as $199.99 per person. Want to feed a family of five for an entire year? Only $9,299.99. Financing available.

Now I'm all for being prepared, but Glenn and his pals are turning preparedness into an industry that preys on the fearful and misinformed. Make sure you have plenty of gold coins so you can trade with other survivors for essentials like old issues of Town Hall Magazine and Sarah Palin's book.

So take note, all you marauders, murderers, pillagers, rapists and zombies out there planning on surviving the destruction: just look for the people with the black and red backpacks with the fork icon on them. That means "food" and you can steal them at gunpoint as they flee the city in their Hummers and Escalades.

Click for the big

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Band Names From Google News (The Reunion Tour)

A formerly popular feature on this blog was "Band Names from Google News" (See here for the archives) in which I conduct a cursory glance of Google news headlines and come up with names for your fledgling act that is currently wowing the kids over at MySpace.

I thought I'd bring it back, at least for a day. Below are the names gathered from today's headlines, with links to the stories that inspired the names.

• Dark Side of Funny (link)
• Up To The Hype (link)
• Some Immunity (link)
• Plastic Logic (link)
• Elvis Birthday (link)
• The Genius Scandal (link)
• Wholesale Power Trade (link)

And speaking of MySpace, check out these punks from Scotland. (Thanks, @everysandwich.)

Tea Party Patriots

bigger

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

If It's Pain They Want

As an unemployed writer, I am considering all my career options, including becoming the host of my own show on the Food Network. It will be about making food in a kitchen, or something. But if I'm going to do that, I'd better have a line of overpriced products ready to ship to my legions of devoted viewers.

I note that hot sauce manufacturers are increasingly naming their products things like "Death," "Misery," "Anguish," "Pain," "Torture," and other words that dare the modern foodie with a penchant for hot stuff to douse their dishes with a splash of masochism. I like spicy food, but I draw the line at hurting myself to eat it. But if that's how the game is played, I will beat them at it.

UPDATE: I'm late to the game, as Chris notes in the comments, linking us to "Screaming Sphincter" and "Anal Angst."

Barfbag Comics, Number 2

Barfbag Comics

Passengers With Flaming Crotches Will Be Removed From the Plane

Or Fireballs, or whatever.

Some will call it profiling, but I think it's a good plan.

Hittin' The Bricks

In lieu of the extra long and bitter post crafted a month and a half ago when I found my job being advertised on Career Builder, (Bilingual? Gimme a break!) I will say only that I'm out there again, ready to do that thing I do, though I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that is.

Meanwhile, take my card.

Face It, Orlando: You're a One-Trick Town

Let's just give it up. We are known for Disney. Enough pretending to be a world-class city. We fail every time we try. We are known for the Mouse (and as the place where babies disappear in the care of white-trash parents).

While some will argue that a game in the mud is a fun and watchable throwback to the good old days of football, the rest will counter that in today's environment, where turf management is a disciplined practice, if not a science, a field that disappears after a little rain is reason enough for some sorry-ass stadium manager to lose his job. The stadium is city-owned, which pretty much explains the problem.

And they still hope that this field hosts qualifying matches for the World Cup. 

A bunch of muddy dudes help a guy named McCray up off a field of shit that made 

Orlando look like a cow town unable and undeserving of hosting a bowl game.