The 2000’s sucked, unless you were a bartender. A recent article in the New York Times about the last decade not only mentioned it as the worst decade ever, but followed that pronouncement with ruminations about how it was the best decade ever for cocktails. It should be no surprise that the worst decade would be the best decade for drinking. (more…)
We all have to be something. Aries, Tarus, Winnebago. I am a Sagittarius. I have never put even a remote amount of faith into such things. I’ve always figured our fortune was guided or blunted by our own actions, not the stars. In the last year, however, I have started regularly reading my horoscope in the local paper. (more…)
I recently read that a cookie factory in Virginia had to shut down for two weeks to “change the recipe” for frozen cookie dough it manufactures. The same plant had a recall of cookie dough last year for some other reason. This time there was e coli in the dough. No cookies, thank God, were shipped this time.
But E. coli tainted cookie dough? And they had to change the recipe to get rid of it? What the hell did the recipe call for, two cups of flour, a half-cup of sugar and a spoonful of manure?
One sign of a sucky economy: NASA has put the space shuttle on sale.
The 1970’s era icon used to be $42 million. Now if you want to ride the rocket (or rather just sit in it in your backyard) the price has been reduced to $28.8 million.
This fall, the old orbital workhorses will go on sale once they quit flying. So far the space agency has gotten 20 responses. That was before they went on sale. The Smithsonian will get Discovery, but you can still pick up the Atlantis and Endeavour for nearly half off. I went to my bank and asked about a loan. They said I didn’t qualify.
I can see what a museum would do with the shuttle – duh – but what would, say, a Wall Streeter who made out like a bandit (literally) do with one of these things?
I can see one renovated into a yacht or an RV. I guess the RV would be a little big for the highway, but hell, that’s half the fun. Sink about 30 big V-10’s in the belly, crank it up and head to the Grand Canyon with the family.
Perhaps you could plant it at the end of a cul-de-sac and put shutters on the shuttle and have a space party every week. It’s a shame it takes so much power to make it actually fly. It would be so much cooler to see the shuttle cruising over a stadium, painted with the Goodyear logo than a blimp.
Me? Being from Alabama? I’d slap some big, knobby tires on it and turn that beast into a monster truck and hit the circuit. The shuttle would bury Gravedigger, crush Big Dawg, flatten Bigfoot and bite Black Widow simultaneously. Can you see King Crunch or Goliath looking in the rearview mirror at the space shuttle bearing down with thrusters redlining?
If Jan Gabriel, the man who’s voice made the echoed phrase, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” so popular, had not died on January 12th, imagine what he could have done announcing ads for the shuttle?
Speaking of credibility:
I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them:
I have recently been thinking about what will happen when we take the media out of social media and build more network into social networking. I am not the only one. David Armano at the Dachis Group recently gave a presentation to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York:
http://www.slideshare.net/dachisgroup/social-business-design-web-20-nyc-2548310
Below, I have framed some of my thoughts around his wonderful presentation.�
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By the time you read this, it will be Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Today is considered by many to be the worst travel day of the year. Day after tomorrow will be Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. In this jobless recovery, will it be a retail boom or bust? Good question. No matter the answer, I will be thankful. (more…)
Recently, we had the opportunity to shoot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Michael Jordan is from Wilmington. They shoot movies and TV shows there. It is a friendly town, filled with college kids from UNC Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College. The Cape Fear River winds through downtown and between swamps and under bridges like it has no where to go and is in no hurry to get there. From Front Street to the docks on Water Street, over cobblestones and narrow alleys nudged by palm fronds and eclectic shops, film crews run cables past restaurants, bars and businesses. Like them, we came to shoot. Unlike us, the Marines came to celebrate the 234th anniversary of the Corps. Then another visitor showed up. Like us and the Marines, tropical storm Ida stayed for six days and nights and worked as hard as any of us.
Did you know that you can make a functioning product or a part for a machine by just scanning it and letting a 3-D printer build it instantly? Have you ever seen a 3-D printer? Can you grasp just how fast we can create an awesome product and manufacture it in a space smaller than your cube at work? I have see it happen, on the Web – where I see everything else in the world. (more…)
Ali Weinberg of MSNBC did a story on Terry and his Twitter novel, catch it here:
Remember when pundits were talking about the “paperless society?” What happened to that? Even with all of the emails and texts and Facebooking and Tweeting, we’re still churning through stacks of paper. Everytime you buy or sell something, you get or give more paper. Even with newspapers hurting and decreasing in size and paring down the news as we get our daily fix of disasters, partisan politics and name-calling online, paper piles up. Phone books use 5 billion trees a year. In 2005, from the best anyone can tell, we cut enough trees to forest Ireland.
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A new idea is floating around Wall Street. It involves investment companies buying your life insurance early and cashing in on it when you die. Can you say reverse mortgage? Yeah, like that.
Let’s say you have a $250,000 life insurance policy. They would give you $75,000 immediately in cash for your policy. When you die, they get the $250,000. If you have a million dollar policy, they’d give you, perhaps, $400,000 and collect a million when you’re safely in the box. Interesting concept.