If this email is not spam, click here to submit the signatures to FortiGuard – AntiSpam Service.
Well that’s cocky. What if it is spam? Where do I click to report you?
Apple Doesn’t Know When to Quit
Apple’s use of indie music in their television spots has been quite successful. They present their products (iPods and Macs) as being young, hip, and trendy, while giving some artist (usually a relatively unheard of one) some much needed exposure and thus a “big break”. Most of the indie artists whose songs have been featured in an Apple commercial have done pretty well, particularly that song, getting very high sales, especially on Apple’s own iTunes.
Unfortunately what Apple does not seem to understand is that familiarity breeds contempt. This is especially true with music. While the more you hear a new song, the more you start to like it (voluntarily or not), there comes a point when the more you hear it, the more you hate it. Apple does not get that and has played many of their commercials so many times that you blow past liking the song and get quite sick of hearing it because the novelty wears way off.
Feist got a lot of attention from the Nano video that her song “1,2,3,4” was featured in, but seriously, how many people were sick and tired of hearing it by the time it was finally done? Yael Naim “New Soul” is currently getting the Apple treatment in the new MacBook campaign and like the others is already getting quite irritating.
As a fan of the Fratelli’s album Costello Music, I was quite upset that I was actually getting sick of hearing “Flathead” over and over and over and over and over again.
Apple needs to learn that too much of anything is bad, especially music. They need to make sure to cut the commercial before the song gets annoying and replace it either with a new commercial if possible, or if they don’t have a new product, then at least a new song.
Don’t Beg the Poor To Be Sponsers
I can’t stand that commercial for the Christian Children’s fund with that old guy with the beard. I despise his accusatory tone that implies that we are bad people unless we sponsor a kid. Worse still, I despise that the commercial runs on basic cable. Why don’t they air it on a premium channel like ShowTime, HBO, or PlayBoy instead? It is like a bum hanging around the unemployment line begging for money. Get lost! If I had money, I wouldn’t be here; go beg at the Mercedes dealership.
There Can Be Only One
Here’s a little blurb in a newsletter from the most hated company on Earth, yours and mine, Rogers:
Thousands of movies. Hundreds of shows. Tons of free programming. And instant access to it all — On Demand only from Rogers.
Well, I’m sure that somewhere in the world there is probably at least one other company that provides those things. If you’re going to bandy around an absolute term like “only”, then you should be damn sure that you really are the only one. Then again, they’ll probably just take what they already have and throw in something exclusively unique to themselves like a brand name and say “only” again. In fact that’s probably what they (deceptively) meant, that the products known as “On Demand” is only from Rogers—even though it may very well not be; I doubt that they bothered to check.
…blah blah blah, Rogers On Demand—only from Rogers.
Well, duh!
An Ounce of Prevention, Moron
I am so disappointed and disgusted by the reaction to school shootings. After the Virgina Tech shooting, people did the same thing that they did with Columbine and other such incidents.
Instead of understanding that those people took such drastic actions because they were miserable, that they were at the end of their ropes, and helpless and powerless to fix their lives, everybody just blames and insults them.
The Virgina Tech incident was an even more illustrative example because Cho left an explanation in video and writing as to why he did it. He explained how and why he was miserable and why he felt he had no other choice but to go on a rampage. However rather than taking this information and using it to come up with a way to provide other people who find themselves in the same situation—which there will be more and more of as time goes on—a place to go to get help to fix their lives, they instead bad mouth and bash Cho. They call him insane, that he had a deranged mind. They ignore the content of the letter and video, pleas for change and instead take issue with his grammar. They call his letter a rambling, ranting, incoherent manifesto. They ignore WHAT he’s saying and WHY he’s saying it, and nag about HOW he says it. That helps nobody. Even worse, they try to hide it from the world and only release what they feel is appropriate for public consumption—specifically the parts that are good for ratings and helps their attacks on him. That certainly helps nobody.
They try to understand why he and the others did it, but for the wrong reasons. Instead of trying to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by helping such people, they instead try to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by finding warning signs that they can use to catch such people. They want a way to punish these miserable people instead of help them. Those people are the sad and pathetic ones.
Some may excuse their behavior by saying that they are just hurt and angry over what happened and are just lashing out at the bad guy. However this doesn’t stand up because the victims aren’t the ones analyzing the cases and letter, it’s the so-called journalists and paparazzi doing it; those people doing that are not lashing out, they’re just incompetent and aggressive fools.
Spam From an Unexpected Source
Last year I signed my mother up for a free subscription to Biography magazine. Little did I know that the “free” came at the expense of being stuck in their system for all eternity.
Every now and then the address I signed up with gets an email from A&E.; I have unsubscribed from the newsletter numerous times, each time receiving a “Successful Unsubscribe” receipt. And yet the emails keep coming. Granted it’s not nearly as much as spammers send, but unwanted mail is unwanted mail, no matter how little it is.
The emails come from different addresses the way that spam does. I have gotten the A&E; newsletters from the following addresses:
ae-insider-notifications@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-insider-one@newsletters.aetv.com
clubfeedback@aetv.com
ae-club-surveys@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club-one@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub-one@newsletters.aetv.com
biographyclub@aetv.com
They just keep changing the from address and keep on spamming. Apparently you have to unsubscribe from each address separately. Worse still, your address isn’t removed from their system, it’s just flagged for removal from that specific address’ mailing list. Next time that the send the newsletter, they change their from address and send it to you again. Frankly, the unsubscribe option is worthless since they won’t be using that address to send the next one anyway.
It’s very surprising and disappointing that A&E; would resort to spamming and using spamming techniques.
I sent a strongly worded letter through their contact web page demanding that they remove the address from all of their systems permanently. We’ll know whether it worked or not in a month or two.
Cookie Monster My @$$
There was an article on CNN about a man who buys boxes of Girl-scout cookies from the girls for $3 and then sells them in his store for $4. Everybody was nagging and accusing him of being a jerk because of that but I have to side with him on this.
He’s absolutely right about it being safer for the girls to sell to him than to go door-to-door. Have none of those complaining people watched To Catch a Predator with Chris Hanson on Dateline NBC? Don’t they realize that this is not 1950 anymore? It’s not safe for little girls to go prancing around town in little skirts and uniforms, trying to sell cookies to weirdos.
The guy is providing a service by not only buying their cookies at full retail price, but also providing a safe way for them to sell them, and also to sell more of them than they could by selling directly to the customer so that they sell more efficiently, easier, and faster. He is just the middle-man like pretty much every other industry.
They are not interested in the work and strife of pounding the pavement (and why should they be?), they are only interested in raising enough money for their activities. It’s not like he’s making his own cookies and selling them as Girl-scout cookies in direct competition. It’s not like people won’t buy cookies from the girls because they already bought them from him. Any cookies they buy from him come from the girls, so his sales are their sales.
I think that their problem is that he is making a profit. So what? It’s only $1 per box and that’s the price he’s charging for providing such a valuable service.
They really need to chill out, rethink the modern, dangerous world, and consider doing this with other shop owners.
(Almost) Refreshing Honesty
From: xxx
To: xxx
Subject: hi
Date: Aug.01.2005hi dude! i just wanted to test your e-mail
Well, honesty may be the best policy, but I still don’t appreciate the spam.
Don’t Spit On My Show and Call It New Frosting
I really hate it when a network advertises “all new episode”s. It would be acceptable if they did it after a break like the Christmas/New Year break, or something, but to do it for each and every episode, or even worse to do it at the beginning of the season is just riddiculus. Those damned promos make it sound as though they are doing us a favor by airing a new episode instead of a rerun or some other crap when actually they must run a new episode, it’s the freaking beginning of the stupid season; airing a new episode isn’t noteworthy, airing a rerun would be! If anything, it displays a picture of the network’s mindset, that they air so much crap and so many reruns, they have to make a big to-do about any new episodes that manage to slip through the cracks.
Last-Second Bus-Cord Dinging
I’ve ridden the bus a lot (not by choice), so I’ve seen a lot of people and a lot of human behavior. One thing that has always bothered me about is that many people seem to wait until the last second to pull the stop-request cord. Don’t they realize that if they wait until the bus is only a couple of feet from their stop that the driver may not be able to stop in time? Don’t they realize that if they are too close, the driver may have to slam on the breaks to stop in time which could cause an accident, especially in the winter? Worse still, most of these same, stupid people actually have the nerve to get mad if the driver does miss it and they have to walk back one stop. Use your brain people!