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Going pink.
Daddy's little girl affects his politics. According to a new study in Germany, each daughter increased the likelihood of voting left by 2.5%.
As read on the internet...
"If you've rocked correctly, your hearing should be too far gone to recognize anything better than 160kbps."
- from MeFi thread on lossless encoding
CADB
This index of character actors is designed to help you remember That Guy. No, not the one who wears the stereo beer hat. The one who played a general that one time on the Mary Tyler Moore show.
Smartstuff
If you're ready for that big boxing day push, smartstuff has some of the strangest products extant.
How to get onto google.
As Wacky Neighbor is a largely mercenarial enterprise, I think it'd be a good idea to raise my hit rates. My newest theory on this front? How-to. I figure adding these two words to a bunch of articles, perhaps appended by things that most people want to know how to do, should make me rich beyond the wildest dreams of mammon.
Here are some things that people want to know how to do:
1. How To Get Rich
2. How To Get Thin
3. How To Get Laid
(Note that numbers 1 and 2 largely correlate to number 3)
Unfortunately, consumer sophistication has gotten to the point where you can't just claim these things without an eyebrow being raised. You need plausible specifics. They don't have to work, they just have to get the dedicated follower into placebo country.
For instance:
How to get thin (note the H1 Tag which google just loves):
- Now a bulleted list, which makes me sound relatively organized.
- Choose a letter of the alphabet and only eat food that begins with it. A relatively unpopular letter is a good choice here, but don't get cute and go for Q or something, because you'll starve.
- Exercise regularly by duct taping weights to everything you own.
- Live in a cage. Have someone you trust give you exactly 1600 calories of oatmeal per day. Assuming your letter was O.
How to get rich:
- Do something with web 2.0, or Ajax. Blog a folksonomy, or podcast a tag. People like me will link to you and you'll make it rich on contextual advertising.
- Stop hunting and gathering. As your elder's stories suggest, seeds planted in the earth will bear fruit several moons later. With the first rains after the long cold, select from the healthiest specimens of your favorite wild grasses and sow, using the beasts of the wild to turn the earth.
- People do great with businesses. Look into one. I hear Amway's very popular. So is Intel, but they make you buy millions of dollars of fabrication equipment before you can even sell chip one.
How to get laid
- I'm not sure what the breeder's cup is, but you might want to get one.
- Early in the dating process, suggest that you have a big wang. For instance: "Rachmaninoff is very romantic, but my money's always been on Schubert. You get the sense that he had a bigger wang. Maybe almost as big as mine."
- Ladies: show a little ankle! Unless you have fat ankles. They can be reduced by packing them in salt for 24 hours. Unfortunately, this only works after you're dead.
- I'm no queer-eye, but if you have one of those moles that looks like a patch of velcro, you should probably find a dermatologist before braving the dating scene.
Every 6- to 12-year-old boy's nightmare
Cute Overload is your clearinghouse for the most fuzzy and cocklewarming images extant. It's the kind of site that will make you want to dot your i's with hearts.
WTC
Oliver Stone has recreated ground zero in LA. Creepiest sentence in the article:
The scene is even eerier inside the old airplane hangar, where the production team rebuilt a portion of the World Trade Center concourse - complete with period handbags in the Coach storefront, clothing in the Banana Republic windows and shoes from Johnston & Murphy.
From the kitchen entrance of the copa to this.
Is having a website, in some sense, the opposite of the Federal Witness Protection program? Sure, in that it announces your presence and mob ties. And yet, for guys who operate in cash, drink martinis and drive sedans, it must be sickeningly new school, somewhat akin to suburban relocation. So in a sense, isn't Goodfella Henry Hill's website the equivalent of "egg noodles in ketchup"?
repositioning Republicans
Another article on marketing and politics, from the Huffington Post.
Marketing Democrats
Every poll is suggesting Bush and the Republicans have a serious problem on their hands. The cat's been out of the bag since Katrina: they're incompetent. Unfortunately, Democrats aren't pulling together the way they need to: at a moment when they should be ripping the administration apart, they seem to hem and haw. They can't even get behind Murtha in any concerted way.
Here's some observations:
They need a big idea, similar to Newt's Contract with America.
Republicans are out of the mainstream w/r/t every major issue. Use that.
The Republican agenda is not conservative, it's reactionary. Use that.
For instance:
Fighting "intelligent design" isn't refusing to "teach the controversy". There is no controversy among scientists. The attempt to shoehorn intelligent design into biology programs is an attack on science. Therefore, opposing the teaching of Intelligent design is defending science. Phrase it as such.
The administration's attempts to "reform" social security is an attack on a program that most Americans like. Democrats are defending social security. Same for other social services.
Iraq leaves us vulnerable. Defense spending is zero-sum; every cent spent holding Sunnis and Shiites at arm's length in Iraq is a cent not spent on real national security. Katrina showed that.
Conclusion:
Mad with power, the republicans have overreached. Their hands are now trapped in the cookiejars. The democrat's response should be phrased as a Defense of American Values. A defense of national consensus. The exact phrase eludes me. Thoughts?
