Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Rant

  • What the hell was that?

    When I started writing this post, the video in question actually existed… but now the link they had goes to the Visitor and Convention Bureau site… hmmmmmm.

    The title of this post might as well be “How not to do viral marketing.” It concerns a new animated ad campaign, detailed in excruciating detail in this Bulletin article, launched by the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau… I’m actually at a loss for words.

    Okay, I’m not really. Nor will I mince words: at best, this video makes me embarrassed for Bend.

    My wife sent me the link in the morning, without explanation. First of all, it took forever to load, which is not a good sign. Finally, it started, and I was immediately sorry it did; my first impulse was to turn it off. When I first glimpsed something that sort of resembled Pilot Butte in the background, I thought, Is this supposed to be about Bend? It couldn’t be, it doesn’t even make any sense. But lo and behold, it turned out to be about Bend after all.

    My next thought was that somebody had gone out of their way—poorly, I might add—to make fun of Bend. It’s certainly not something that would ever entice me to visit.

    Finally I saw the Bulletin article, and things started to make a perverse sense. Here’s a clip:

    The Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau has launched an edgy, animated online marketing campaign featuring a video the bureau hopes is so entertaining that viewers will e-mail it to friends, family and colleagues.

    The video is sort of like Bend meets The Simpsons.

    Locals will recognize scenes in the lighthearted production and presumably chuckle at the characters and lyrics.
    …
    “The video is funny and entertaining,” Glover said. “But, there’s also a message that shows what we have here – the river, rafting, skiing, etc. We hope that people will be entertained, then watch it again or pass it along via e-mail.”

    Ultimately, the video’s goal is to interest more people in visiting Bend.

    According to Glover, the video is the first of its kind to market a destination such as Bend through an emerging form of advertising known as viral marketing.
    …
    Glover already considers the campaign a winner, thanks to a marketing coup that will allow friendster.com, a video downloading site popular among iPod owners, to send links to the video with endorsements to more than 1.25 million of its subscribers.

    “Just through that, the campaign is a success,” Glover said.

    Are you kidding me?

    There’s nothing “edgy” or Simpsons-like anywhere in that video. In fact, it’s some seriously shoddy art and animation work happening there. (I know—well, I hope—the people behind it can do better.) And being a local, trust me when I say there’s no chuckling going on, and the “recognizable” scenes are barely even that.

    Here’s a hint about viral marketing: it tends to work best when it’s not directed. Don’t hold it out there and proclaim it a success; either it’ll happen on its own or it won’t. You have no real control over the matter.

    And they think hooking up with Friendster is a marketing coup? Really? Friendster is on the wane in a big way. They would have been far better off leveraging MySpace (with 86 million users) and YouTube. Then you’d see some real numbers.

    Oh and by the way, pick a better domain name next time… “where-the-hell-are-we.com” just lacks that, how would you say, convenience and ease of use in passing around a link.

    I will concede that this video is viral in an avian flu sense—it’s spreading around the local blogosphere and everybody I’ve shown it to hates it. But that’s not the kind of viral you’d hope for.

    Postscript: And it’s gone… I wonder if that was intentional, or there was too much backlash?

    Post-postscript: Yes, you’ll notice I didn’t actually link to the video directly… I debated it. But since it appears to be gone anyway, oh well.

  • Blogday, Earth Day, and a lawn rant

    When I said “the first part of my day” in my earlier post today, I really had no idea that actually meant “the entire day.” Somehow I always undershoot these estimates with the misplaced optimism… like also thinking I’d only need one load of compost…

    In order to topdress the lawn with compost, I had to borrow my dad’s truck so I could haul it in bulk (ever tried to cover several thousand square feet of lawn with only bags of fertilizer? Me neither, and I wasn’t about to try). My mom had suggested steer manure compost, and most places in town that offer it (always in a mix with “yard debris”) were outrageously expensive, so we settled on getting it from Hershey Cattle Company over in Redmond for only $15 per yard. This is actually a 40/60 mix of manure with topsoil or something, but it was still half as costly as the next place.

    The catch, of course, to borrowing Dad’s truck was that I had to drive out to his place (in Alfalfa) and help him load a couch into the back of the truck, which he’d promised to a co-worker. So out I went at 8:30 in the morning. We loaded up the couch, tied it up, and I followed him back into town.

    I helped him deliver the couch, to an apartment complex behind COCC, which of course was on the second floor, up a narrow, cracked concrete staircase. Once that was done, we were back to my place, where Dad took my car back home and left me with the truck. By now it was about 10:30.

    Let me digress for a bit about Earth Day, since I did mention it in the title to this post. Today being both the anniversary of this blog and Earth Day, it was of course the perfect day to do Earth-friendly yardwork with (ahem) organic eco-friendly fertilizer. My wife transplanted flowers. I worked out in the sun all day. So it doesn’t get any more “Earth Day” than that, despite the goofy guy in a “Cat in the Hat” hat on Z21 yapping about how cool it was that there was some parade downtown to celebrate… how cool the Earth is, or something (hey, his words, not mine). Okay, digression over.

    I left around 10:50 or so for Redmond. (I actually had to turn back after two blocks because I forgot my tarp. You didn’t think I was going to drive all the way back from Redmond with a truckload of manure and not have it tarped, did you?) Let me just say this about my dad’s truck: I know it’s been awhile since I had my S-10, but holy crap the clutch on his truck is way looser than mine was and that truck’s seen some miles (and it was only a year older than mine). I was about halfway to Redmond before I got used to driving it.

    Got to the Hershey place, paid for a yard (which pretty much fills up an S-10 truckbed), and panicked a bit when the guy dumped the load of manure into the truck with the backhoe and I thought for a moment the shocks were going to go. All of a sudden I was driving a rear-wheel low-rider—really low. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive home (on busy Highway 97 nearly the whole way). So I tarped up the load, tied it, and was pulling out when I realized another nasty little surprise had crept up on me.

    You ever drive a pickup truck when it’s fully loaded in back? And by “fully loaded” I mean overloaded? Yeah, besides the obvious (it takes a lot longer to speed up and slow down), the entire front end seems to float around, like you’re suddenly piloting a wobbly boat. I hadn’t really remembered that little phenomenon since living at home and hauling over-burdened loads of hay. I was less than thrilled.

    The drive home was uneventful, though (if a little tense). By the time I got back it was nearly 11:30.

    Now, this compost was really good, really soil-like in composition. It still stank like steer manure, but it might as well be topsoil in appearance. I figured it would be easy to spread, because we have this little Turf Builder® spreader with adjustable spray opening, and I could just walk around the yard, pushing the spreader and blithely spraying manure all over the place. So I load it up, and the thing won’t work worth a damn. It’s just too small for what we’re dealing with.

    So that meant back to the tried-and-true method for cursing gardeners everywhere: wheelbarrow and shovel, and spreading it by hand.

    And of course today was a windy day. Not just breezy, but big wind gusts that would come in and handily blow steer manure dust from the shovel all over the place—in your shoes, on your clothes, in your face and eyes. Very lovely. I think I can still sense the stuff in my nasal cavity. But I got a rhythm going finally, and went back for a second load at about 2:30.

    Same routine as before, only I think this load was heavier: piloting a jerky boat down the gusty highway. This load went quicker, thanks to my wife helping, and we even had a couple of wheelbarrow loads left over (now in a pile out by the shed). By the time I’d showered and was sitting down to relax, it was 5:20! Where’d the day go? Oh yeah, I got a bunch of shit done… (rim shot).

    Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but I’m really getting tired of owning a lawn. I think I’m beginning to hate it, actually. The stupid thing is full of dry and dead patches, there’s not enough topsoil underneath the front half (thus necessitating the topdressing), watering is a joke during the summer months (we’re on the edge of the High Desert, remember?), and general maintenance of what amounts to a crop of an invasive plant species is wearing very, very thin with me.

    And what are lawns good for, anyway? Let’s see, sitting on (watch out for bugs)… avoiding dog poo… playing croquet on (if you’re British)… lawn darts (try not to kill the opponent)… hmmm. Jeez, when I was growing up, we had very little lawn, and we kids always ran off to play in the dirt and rocks and trees anyway. Go figure.

    (Okay, not entirely true; the lawn made a good wrestling ring when we were trying out WWF wrestling moves. But they say kids shouldn’t do that nowadays, so…)

    Me, I’d be perfectly happy with a little more natural Central Oregon wilderness. But that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.

    The rest of my day involved drinking some beer and reading my favorite new book. Now that’s the right way to end a day.

    And oh yeah, I even sunburned my neck a bit. Now I’m just a red neck hauling manure around in an old truck.

    Go figure.

  • NYTimes on Bend (late review)

    I don’t know how I missed this the first time around (December 23rd, probably because I don’t read the New York Times): Where Timber Was King, the Golf Club Replaces the Ax.

    I don’t really know what to think about this article. I certainly can’t relate to it, it’s aiming for the affluent and reeks of elitism. A little fisking, anyone?

    WHEN you own a home in the sixth-fastest-growing region in the country, you worry about letting the cat out at night because of the coyotes howling in the forest. You scribe fresh powder turns down 9,000-foot-high bowls and muscle bicycles through high-desert hills. At some point, perhaps on a fairway between Holes 4 and 5, you wonder whether those lonely volcanoes lingering on the skyline will ever blow. The thing you rarely do is call your town rural.

    Dammit, I do call my town rural; I grew up rural, that’s how we are. We actually did lose a cat to coyotes, growing up. I don’t ski, I’m sorry to say, nor do I golf. So far, it’s failing to hook me.

    Albert Angelo Jr., an owner of a family-run development company, bought in Bend for its 300 annual days of sunshine and the 4.3 million acres of public land just beyond his floor-to-ceiling windows. He plans to divide his time between his houses in Vancouver, Wash., and Palm Desert, Calif., and his new $3 million, 5,100-square-foot single-story house in Pronghorn, a resort on the outskirts of town.

    “When I look out my Pronghorn house facing north, I see a covered patio with a 10-foot-diameter barbecue pit, a pop-up plasma TV and a view of the golf course – but of a putting green, so my house won’t get hit by golf balls,” Mr. Angelo, 59, said. “You have a good lifestyle down there.”

    Okay, I totally cannot relate. I’d say this guy’s idea of “a good lifestyle down there” is completely out-of-sync with the reality of Bend.

    About 300 people are on a waiting list to purchase another dozen town houses at the Bluffs at the Old Mill, a neighborhood with views of the Mount Bachelor, Broken Top, and Three Sisters volcanoes.

    Again with the volcanoes. In my day we just called them “the mountains.” And for everybody wondering about the high real estate prices, look no more… the 288 people on that waiting list who won’t get a choice home want to go somewhere…

    Bend’s proximity to trails for hiking and cross-country skiing, coupled with a bustling vibe, appealed to Stephen Johnson, 29, a salesman from Medford, Ore. In November, he bought a new 1,933-square-foot, two-story weekend house for $215,000 in southeast Bend. “It still feels like a small town but with more amenities that make it a fun place to visit,” he said.

    Holy shit, there was a two-story, 1,933-square foot house for sale in town for only $215,000 as recently as November? Who did he have to kill to get the place for that cheap??

    When Benders aren’t bouncing through the 370 inches of annual snowfall at Mount Bachelor, about 30 minutes west, much of the après action centers on Wall and Bond Streets, downtown’s two main arteries. Today, you’ll find no hardware store off the brick sidewalks, but should you seek information on a $2.75 million resort home or wish to make a donation to pierced buskers outside Bellatazza coffee shop, you need walk only a few blocks.

    First of all, that should be “Bendites,” not “Benders”—we’re neither (mostly) drunks nor a certain sarcastic cartoon robot. Second of all, don’t remind me that there’s no hardware store downtown—it was a sad day when Masterson St. Clair finally closed down. But it’s good to know I can find that info on that $2.75-mil home, that’s important. Otherwise, this whole paragraph? Pretty much reeks of narcissistic self-importance. “Après action” and “pierced buskers” my ass.

    Bend is 94 percent white. The joke among locals is that diversity means Subarus of different colors.

    I’ve never heard that joke. I’ve lived here most of my life.

    Okay, that’s enough. Go read the article, even if it bothers you as much as it seems to have me. I can’t help but wonder if they’re writing about the same town that I live in…

  • Dumbing down literature

    Does this sound like a good idea?

    Woe un2mnkind! The text message is trying to summarise the great poet John Milton and a respected academic thinks this may be a smart new way to teach literature.

    A company offering mobile phones to students has hired Professor John Sutherland, professor emeritus of English Literature at University College London, to offer subscribers text message summaries and quotes from literary classics.

    The hope is that messages in the truncated shorthand of mobile phones will help make great literature more accessible.

    So butchering the classics into text-messaging shorthand that are barely understandable will make them more accessible? Oh, this is so, so wrong.

    First of all, there’s no “teaching” of literature going on here; you might as well be getting summaries of last night’s episode of “Lost”—only reading “MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus” would not entice me to pick up Jane Eyre.

    Second of all, what does a professor emeritus of English Literature even know about text-messaging shorthand? Jeez, I don’t know much, but the examples they give seem contrived even to me.

    Third, what self-respecting teen would subscribe to this service? Here’s a hint—those of us who, as teens, were into literature and could quote from various works really, really weren’t a part of that crowd. If you wanted to be part of that crowd, well, you wouldn’t be getting literature on your phone, as it were.

    Via Slashdot.

    Update 11/17: CNN has a better article which has more on the pushback against the service.

  • MySpace rant

    I’ve been seeing lots of referrer hits from MySpace on my site lately, so I thought it was apropos to point to this article on Kuro5hin: MySpace: A Place for Dolts. It’s just too funny not to, and it’s full of great soundbites.

    You see, when you sign up for MySpace, you instantly have your first friend. You’re immediately best buddies with the most popular person on MySpace: Tom. Now, to understand the stupidity of this, you have to understand that this is a social networking mechanism; if I’m friends with John and John is friends with Sally, then Sally is syllogistically my friend, and if I visit her profile it will tell me just that: “Sally is in your extended network”. But if EVERYONE is friends with Tom, then there might as well not be an extended network feature at all, and he is defeating the purpose of his time and his website. Basically what I’m saying is, Tom is a dumbshit.

    But there’s a reason why none of this matters. There’s a reason why he wins even though he programs in Cold Fusion (I have yet to meet someone who uses Cold Fusion and isn’t a complete moron), even though he has no sense of style or ergonomics, and even though he’s lazy as hell: he gets an enormous amount of money from the website. Movies, bands, dating services, clothing companies, non-profit organizations, and even the US Army advertises on MySpace.

    Ah, you gotta love cynical internet rants.

    See also Movable Type Rant, a pointer to another great Kuro5hin piece.

  • Yahoo is cold calling me

    My wife fielded a call this afternoon from a telemarketer looking to speak with the owner of chuggnutt.com (which is what I use as the registrant for my domain names), and was confused to find out it wasn’t a business he was calling. This wouldn’t be noteworthy except for the fact that the guy identified himself as working for Yahoo! and was trying to sell their Pay Per Click ad service.

    Since when does Yahoo—or any of the big internet players, for that matter—resort to telemarketing? Cold calling no less? I would have thought that Yahoo especially would know better. I may or may not have looked into their ads in the future, but I’m pretty sure I won’t at all now. Here’s a hint: I don’t like telemarketing. I used to work for a telemarketing company in Spokane, so while I can totally sympathize with the individuals who have to actually make the day-to-day calls and deal with people that basically hate them, I really, really don’t like the companies/corporations behind telemarketing, especially the ones trying to sell something. It’s a sleazy business.

    In the interests of transparency, here’s the info from call: the number was 888-254-2716 (toll free, which was kind of odd), and the person my wife spoke to was Walter. He specifically identified himself as working for Yahoo. I Googled the number (heh), but didn’t find much, just enough to indicate that it points to Yahoo/Overture.

  • The Burger King creeps me out

    Creepy plastic Burger King maskThis topic on ORblogs prompted this post. What the hell is up with that creepy Burger King mask? All I know is, if I see that thing anywhere near my house, burger or no burger, I’m going for a gun.

  • Extending daylight savings time?

    This may possibly be the dumbest idea ever: Congress may extend daylight-saving time. Come on, are you kidding me? What a monumental waste of… well, everything. Jesus Christ, if you really need that “extra” hour of daylight, just get up an hour earlier.

    And that whole “The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use” line is a crock of shit, too. Think about it.

    Yeah, strong feelings against it. I’ve ranted about daylight savings before. I just think the whole concept is buffoonish.

    Wikipedia, as usual, has an excellent article on daylight savings, worth reading.

  • Spelling "Lose"

    One huge spelling mistake that’s been driving me crazy lately—and I’m seeing it everywhere, literally everywhere, even this article in the Bulletin today—is spelling the word “lose” as “loose.” How can people continually misspell such a simple word? Worse, why didn’t the editor of the newspaper catch this?

    lose: verb. Inflected forms: lost, losing. Meanings: to bring to destruction — used chiefly in passive construction; to miss from one’s possession or from a customary or supposed place; to suffer deprivation of; part with especially in an unforeseen or accidental manner; etc.

     

    loose: adjective. Inflected forms: looser, loosest. Meanings: not rigidly fastened or securely attached; having worked partly free from attachments; having relative freedom of movement; not tight-fitting; etc. As a verb: Inflected Form: loosed, loosing. Meanings: to let loose; to make loose; to cast loose; etc.

  • Susan B. Anthony; or, People Are Dumb

    I’m not sure if people are stupid, ignorant, lacking in a proper education or some combination of those, but the following example should illustrate my point. At work today I was talking with a co-worker about education (her son is in second grade and learning history) and the name Susan B. Anthony came up. I asked, “You know who she was, right?”

    “Uh, someone famous—I know she was on a coin,” was the reply.

    Pretty bad. I’m always highly disappointed when I run into this type of thing at work… I should know better by now.

    What’s worse, though, is when I asked another (female) co-worker the same question:

    “I know she’s on a coin.”

    Ug.