Almostgotit.com

Hat tip to that fabulous Canadian worthy, Duckworth Peslar, who notified me today that Taser International is marketing a personal taser with a built in MP3 player — one that doesn’t skip a beat when you taser someone or something.

Amazing.

Also making international news over the weekend: FLOGOS are here! The latest in crazy advertising gimmicks, Flogos look — and float in the air — like clouds, but are literally floating logos made of soap bubbles filled with helium.  Re-purposed snow blowers pump the shapes through a computer-shaped stencil to form any 2-D logo one wishes, e.g the Nike swish or the Apple Computer apple. 

Our kids all go to the same high school, and we meet for lunch once a week at the Gourmet Market Café. That is, those of us who can get away from work that week do so. It’s been a different group each time.

However, as we are all highly trained professionals, our conversation is always on-track as well as brilliant. 

Today’s topics, to wit:

(1) How John likes Harvard. 

(2) What it’s like volunteering in the High School Guidance Office (and) when you are supposed to call 9-1-1.

(3) How excited Hannah is to be going to Japan.

(4) Whether the middle school should even bother staying open after state testing is over in April.

(5) Whether a knitting club will EVER work at the High School. Particularly in a room that smells funny.

(6) What will happen to Gourmet Market Café’s soup menu now that their regular chef has left.

(7) Touch Therapy: Should a Nurse Seriously Study This, or Not?

(8) How many of us could move to Seattle to become potters and writers and other wild and interesting things before this city (and our families) would even notice.

(9) Whether, if you let your lawn grow so tall that your 11 y-o daughter starts to take daily “how far over the city codes you are” measurements, the neighbors will think you are going through a divorce, will call you with their very kind concerns, and then report you to the authorities.

(10) How hard it should be raining before you leave the Café patio and move to an inside table.

Wow.  I’ve always wondered where it was.

While this particular model that I own, by BonJour, seems no longer to be available,  there are dozens of other insulated French press pots now on the market.  And no wonder!   They are easy to use, easy to clean, and make to-die-for-coffee.  As a comes-from-Seattle-girl, I know.

Many coffee connoisseurs recommend press pots for the best coffee flavor, but the glass ones don’t keep coffee hot for more than a few minutes.  Problem solved with this insulated version,  which I can set right next to my computer, where it provides me with hours of refills! 

I’d buy this pot over and over again, too, except that the one we have will never wear out. We’ve used it daily for years now. 

I would like to add that not a single company or person is paying me to write about insulated French-Press Coffee Pots,  though I certainly think it is an excellent idea to send nice things to bloggers and ask them for endorsements (money is always a nice thing to send to bloggers, too.) 

After all.  If the Johnson & Johnson marketing people  learned anything from their recent Camp Baby experience, they may now realize they’d have been much better off showering their target mom bloggers with products (to keep and to use as blog give-aways) instead of paying their way to a conference where all the neuroscientists, nurses and marketing professionals who dominate the momosphere  were treated to scintillating sessions about hair-braiding.

I’m just saying.  And for the record, my contact information is right up there, at the top of this screen.

The story, in brief:  Johnson & Johnson co. marketers decide to be hip, and so they invite 50 of the biggest names in mom-blogging to an all-expenses-paid “Camp Baby” event   in early April.   They handle the invitations very badly.  Then they start disinviting people.   J&J has received lots of blog time in the aftermath, all right!  Don’t miss Susan Getgood’s hilarious “Camp Baby” post mortem!

Written especially for the web, the (very) short-form comedy series, “In the Motherhood,” is just begining its second season. Scripted by Hollywood professionals and with an all star cast featuring Leah Remini (”The King of Queens”), Jenny McCarthy and Chelsea Handler, the hilarious and edgy story ideas for each episode are submitted by real-life mothers from across the country. It’s a terrific concept.

And the episodes are FUNNY.

In the Motherhood hopes to become a major destination site, and so far it seems to be succeeding. I love the boldness of pairing the collaborative nature of the web with the professional production values already used by the television and movie industry. And all of this effort is aimed not at the still-highly-male-IT-industry, but at mothers. Hurray!

Oh sure — it’s still a marketing ploy. Nevertheless, it is also truly entertaining while managing to avoid the condescension and banality that still plagues so many “mommy” websites.

So hats off to ‘em, is what I say.

I’ve been tagged by Career Encourager.  Assignment: write a six word memoir.  Other rules: post your own memoir. Tag at least five more blogs. Link to them and leave comments. Acknowledge the blog that tagged YOU. Link to that blog as well. (Rules rewritten to fit my theme. You can also use original rules. Peggy’s better at rules than I!)

A terrific book inspired it all.  Not Quite What I Was Planning… Compilation from submissions to a contest.  My dad sent me a copy.  I have not thanked him yet.  You can buy one from here.   Good review in the New Yorker.   Entirely written in six word sentences.  Cleverly, they didn’t point this out. I’m not so clever, just slow.  

I liked their idea, so borrowed. 

The book is clever, funny, poignant.   Here’s a few of my favorites:

I’m my mother, and I’m fine.  
I was born. Some assembly required.
It was embarrassing, so don’t ask.
I think, therefore I am bald.

My, this is a daunting task. Tried to sum things up: failed.  Advisors say don’t think too much.  I wrote a few, can’t choose.

• How did all of this happen?
• More I live, less I know.
• Clearly I am not an earthling.
• Figured a few things out, eventually.

I choose to tag these blogs:

• Karen at Working Girl
• Paul at Original Faith
• TrueVyne at The True Vyne 
• Emily at The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes
• Ursula at Working Mother Blog

Come on now - YOU try one!

You may already have read “Invisible Mother,” (text below). As best as I can tell it’s been circulating online since at least 2005, via email, message boards, and dozens and dozens of blogs — but it is always credited to a nameless author.

Because she’s invisible. Get it?

I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.

Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.
(more…)

Photo by Kris de Curtis

I’ve had a house full of children, visiting relatives, and one vacationing husband. Consequently, we keep running out of food, clean towels, and unoccupied computers.

Among other things: in the midst of everyone taking showers one morning, our ancient plumbing stopped working (first in one bathroom, and then in the other – a total shut-out!)

Sigh. I really did mean to be more organized this week. But honestly? At this point I don’t even know where my day planner is. I did find my cell phone (in the bathroom) and my car keys (hanging from the car’s passenger-side door.)

Happy Easter, folks!

Related Posts:

Lord Love a Log Splitter: on Trying to Live a More Balanced Life
Hear, Hear!

I like good quotes as much as the next person. Really.

So when my sister sent around this “great quotes from great leaders” video from Simpletruths.com, I watched it happily enough. It’s only three minutes long, and it does have some really good quotes. It also has some really sweet piano music.

All that’s missing are the smiling receptionists, the strong scent of chemicals, and the dentist drills whining in the background.

“The Beautiful Gift Book” from SimpleTruths.com, which contains all these quotes and many MORE, costs $19.95. Plus you get a free DVD.

Motivational quotes and sayings — particularly the ones made into the glossy, black-framed motivational posters that line the walls of our schools and work places, are a multi-million dollar industry. Or so I’m told by Despair, Inc., whose mission is to Fight Back.

Deeply concerned that “while promising to stimulate “Hope”, “Success” and “Teamwork”, instead these tools of coercion and intimidation have inspired only grief, anger and nausea,” Despair, Inc. seeks to redress these irrationally exuberant products with some profiteering, er, amelioration of their own.

At Despair.com, one can purchase high-quality DEmotivational posters, despairwear, pessimist mugs, and other thoughtful corporate gifts. Featured prominently is bestselling book,The Art of Demotivation, praised by Financial Times Management Columnist Lucy Kellaway as “the most daring, funny and subversive management book ever written”. There are also several downloadable management training podcasts on the site too which shouldn’t be missed.

Hint: if you like/understand “The Office,” either in its American or British versions, you will like these, too.

In fact, the webmaster recommends that if your life is desperately without purpose or hope, you ought to make Despair.com into your homepage.

————-
Related Posts:

Sweet Sorrow Sourdough Chocolate Cake
Attainable Affirmations for the almost-employed
Humor is no jobstacle