Thursday, October 23, 2008

the wee hours

Buy 2, Get 1 Free…psych!

Isn’t it awful, the bad apostrophe placement, compounded with the two different fonts on top of each other?  What’s even worse, kinda maybe sorta, is that this coupon led drooling cupcake wanters to an empty store.  Ha!  Joke’s on you, cupcake lovers.  However, if you drive up the street a bit, to Farm Road, get thee to the 7-Eleven sign (just when you thought they weren’t going to build any more of them, one shows up almost on your front porch)...then scooch yourself to the left a few doors.  All your cupcake needs will be met, and no one will assault you with an extra apostrophe.  I can’t swear that the sugar and the cute kid faces (after school and on weekends, maybe) won’t give you that weird salivary gland pain though.  But, deal, okay?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

the wee hours

“Just Cupcake’s”???

What’s wrong with this picture?  How much will it cost to fix?  Wouldn’t it be cool if this society really existed and we could get membership cards and everything?

I have a toothache right now or I’d really rant about this.  Is it “Just Cupcake’s Empty Building”?  “Just Cupcake’s” sign that maybe they shouldn’t open a cupcake store so close (within blocks) of another cupcake place that already exists, and on the same street, yet?  How many people do you think saw the sign before it went up (from the owners to the makers of the sign to the installers of the sign) and had no clue that there was anything wrong with it?  Five?  Ten?  Too (punny, huh?) many, I’m thinking.

 

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

late morning

Idiot of the Day - Emma Clarke’s (The Voice of London’s Tube System) Boss

Dear Transport for London Officials, Emma Clarke has been a model employee for eight years.  Okay, I assume she’s been a model employee.  After all, she does voice-over work, what problems could she possibly cause at work?  Anyway, firing someone for having a sense of humor is really quite pathetic.  So she spoofed her own London Tube announcements, so what!  It’s funny.  Haven’t they seen the movie “Airplane”, where they spoofed the airport parking announcements?

Male announcer: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone. Female announcer: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone. Male announcer: The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a white zone. Female announcer: No, the white zone is for loading. Now, there is no stopping in a RED zone. Male announcer: The red zone has always been for loading. Female announcer: Don’t you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for unloading. Male announcer: Look Betty, don’t start up with your white zone shit again. There’s just no stopping in a white zone. Female announcer: Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion. Male announcer: It’s really the only sensible thing to do, if it’s done safely. Therapeutically there’s no danger involved. - from imdb.com

Here are a couple of her spoofed announcements: “Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.”  “We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.”  I’m an American and I’m not offended, so give the lady her job back.  By the way, you can also join the Facebook group titled, “Reinstate the Tube voice lady!”  Join the 154 of us, fighting for truth, justice, and the sarcastic way.

To hear Emma Clarke’s entertaining spoofs, go here.  Unfortunately, her website has been so overloaded with traffic that she probably couldn’t afford the bandwidth required to keep her recordings available.  I guess maybe I shouldn’t say “unfortunately”, because the traffic means that the word has gotten out that she lost her job because she mocked herself, so she’s probably being offered jobs left and right.  She has a lovely voice - I’d hire her to speak for me.

Monday, October 08, 2007

early evening

Idiot of the Day - BISSELL

I just received an email from BISSELL, bragging about how they’re helping Petfinder.  Let me tell you a little about affiliate marketing and then we’ll see how much bragging Bissell should be doing.  BISSELL tells me in their Petfinder advertisement (and yes, that’s exactly what it is, advertising on the back of Petfinder) email that my purchase can help Petfinder.  They think because I joined Petfinder that I’ll fall all over this part of their email, “Did you know when you purchase BISSELL products through the Petfinder.com website, 5% of the total sale will go directly to Petfinder.com? Nothing could be better than helping sheltered pets while making cleaning around the home a little easier!”

Whoo hoo, 5 whole percent?  Hold me back, I’m so excited.  Okay, I lied, I’m not excited at all.  I’m an affiliate for Sharper Image, and if I sell their products, I get a minimum of 8% (it used to be 10%, when we were actually making money from our Sharper Image traffic - funny how the percentage was lowered at the same time as our sales percentage was also lowered…mo’ money for Sharper Image, but this isn’t about them) to a maximum of 12%, and I’m just a person walking in off the street.  So, I went to BISSELL’S website to see what their affiliate program pays.  Yes, it indeed also pays 8%, so they’re stealing 3% from Petfinder, yet getting the benefit of advertising as a pet loving do-gooder through Petfinder’s email list.  Pretty crappy, huh?

Sure, I forgot to mention the tremendous giveaway of ten (10) free BISSELL/Petfinder shirts, if you register for the “BISSELL Pet Lovers Community”.  Whoo hoo, ten whole t-shirts.  If you buy the fancy-pants BISSELL ProHeat 2X Select Upright Deep Cleaner (which I’d love to have, by the way - although the Little Green Portable Deep Cleaner might be even better…and cheaper) for $250, the average BISSELL affiliate off the street would make $20; however, Petfinder would only make $12.50.  Not very pet friendly, is it?  Shouldn’t BISSELL be giving Petfinder a BETTER affiliate percentage than Joe Schmoe, who logs into the BISSELL website and immediately gets to make 8%?  I think that, at the very least, Petfinder should make 10%.  I can get $2 t-shirts at Michael’s to print cute BISSELL/Petfinder advertising on, so I’m not impressed by the ten t-shirts they’re giving away each month.

I was going to write to BISSELL myself, privately, but I was so offended by the crappy 5% that I needed to do it publicly.  The email acted like BISSELL was doing such a tremendous favor for Petfinder, when in fact, it’s Petfinder who is doing the favor for BISSELL.  Maybe Petfinder just needs to find some experienced affiliate marketers who know when companies are trying to cheat a pet rescue organization.  If you’d like to tell BISSELL how disappointed in them you are, here’s their contact form.

By the way, this isn’t to say that BISSELL doesn’t have excellent products - they do.  But, I would like them to be more generous to Petfinder…or at the very least, treat them as well as they’d treat any affiliate who wanders by their website to sign up for their affiliate program.

Monday, September 10, 2007

evening

Idiot of the Day - Hey, Did You Know That Kanye West is Black?  Shock to me too.

Oh man, am I tired of Kanye West’s whinybabyass.  First, he was mad about Britney Spears opening the MTV VMAs (hey, just because she’s been daily headline gossip now for over a year), saying, “Maybe my money’s not right. Maybe my skin’s not right.”  Or dude, maybe you kept your underwear on in public, didn’t get child services called on you, didn’t shave your head, didn’t go to rehab, so no one wants to see what sort of trainwreck you might be when you opened the awards. 

Now, the poor baby is throwing a tantrum (yes, another one) because he didn’t win…and he has to bring up race, again.  “That’s two years in a row, man ... give a black man a chance,” said West, stomping around his entourage and directing his comments at a reporter. “I’m trying hard man, I have the ... No. 1 record, man.”  Sure, it was good that he spoke out after Hurricane Katrina, saying that President Bush doesn’t care about black people, which is probably true, but only in that the black people he doesn’t care about are poor black people.  He doesn’t care about poor white people either.

Kanye, feel free to stay home next time.  It’s A-okay with me.