An Idea for Saving the Car Companies
Give each household a voucher good for a free electric car that doesn’t exist yet. It must be made by any of the big three. This produces a ready market without spending any money until the companies are stabalized and set on a new path that will help to solve several long term problems.
Okay, Take Your Medicine
Saw this in the Dallas Morning News today:
Fellowship Church pastor Rev. Ed Young preaches a sermon dealing with sex while sitting on a bed at the Grapevine church. Rev. Young is issuing a challenge this Sunday for married couples to have sex on seven straight days.
You have to see the picture.
Liquid Plumber: Joe’s Wardrobe Costs GOP $150K
On Friday, the Republican National Committee reported receipts amounting to nearly $150,000 for clothing, cosmetic treatments, and beef jerky allocated to McCain campaign phenomenon Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher.
McCain senior strategist and speechwriter Mark Salter dismissed the bills as “irrelevant” and “false” while insisting, “even if the story were true, and it is, Obama will raise taxes.”
U.S. Economy Inflates and Recedes Simultaneously
America’s turgid economy has finally oozed over the brink of a deep financial chasm, the likes of which has not been seen or smelled or imagined for decades.
The world banking crisis, rising commodity costs, and an uncertain energy supply have combined to ignite a paper bag of dog poo left on the doorsteps of hapless consumers.
At the same time the world monetary supply tightens, prices continue to soar. According to gifted moneyologist Warren Buffet, the costs of luxury yachts and Moet & Chandon champagne have risen nearly 400% in just seven years, although according to Mr. Buffet the inflationary spiral hurts the very wealthy “not one damned bit — we’re too rich.”
Palin Better Qualified to Handle Fashion Crisis
RNC spokesbuyer Maria Comella refused to comment on the report’s details, although she reaffirmed the McCain campaign’s commitment to a strong, stylish America and described Ms. Palin’s look as “bitchin’.”
The GOP is clearly tapping into a societal predisposition to dress-up Barbie, although most old white male Republicans mentally undress Alaska’s popular populist governor.
automotive pareidolia
People like cars that look angry and aggressive.
Consumers prefer cars to be angry-looking and dominant. That’s the official word from a team at the University of Vienna after studying a group of male and female volunteers. Each were asked to rate the design features on 38 passenger cars introduced between 2004 and 2006. After rating the vehicle’s physical traits, the researchers asked if the subjects saw “faces” (it’s a phenomenon called “pareidolia”) in the vehicles’ appearances. Lastly, they asked participants which cars in the group they preferred.
Interestingly enough, the more a vehicle bore characteristics appearing mature, dominant, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking, the better the research subjects liked the cars. While the study didn’t correlate actual sales figures with implied vehicle attitudes, it does add credence to the fact that emotion sways consumers towards certain models and adds yet another meaning to the familiar mid-cycle “facelift.”
Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Male
Sasha Baron Cohen was escorted from a fashion show in Milan on Friday.
After a few minutes of darkness while Baron Cohen, or Bruno, was escorted off the catwalk, the show started again. Models had kept their cool but the designer was visibly upset when she appeared at the end of the show.
Miley Cyrus Fires Disney
“It seemed like we were doing our job and getting along with Miley,” said Disney senior spokesdwarf, Obvious. “Now we’re hurt, angry, and confused. We’d like to punch her in the throat but she is just so damned cute.”
Tensions between Ms. Cyrus and Disney had been escalating for months amid rumors of the teen phenom agreeing to appear in a cheesy cinematic adaptation of a cheesy Nicholas Sparks novel, and as a young Carrie Bradshaw in the highly anticipated Sex and the City prequel, Heavy Petting and the City.
endorphin branding
A marketer proposes a new approach to campaigning.
Endorphin branding is the use of scent as a means of imprinting a highly emotional, positive experience in tandem with a targeted signature scent, which can be reintroduced at a later time to trigger and recreate the desired response. This strategy should be implemented at political events, which are positively charged environments ripe for this type of scent branding.
This presidential election has already seen historic, innovative campaign efforts, particularly Senator Obama’s use of the Internet to raise funds and communicate his messages. A multi-faceted, scented campaign could provide the edge one of these candidates needs to help gain victory in November.
What does the current administration smell like?
Poll: McCain Old and White, Obama Young and Black
“We accumulate plenty of raw data,” said thirty-year veteran statistician Nelson Temple of Scranton, PA, “even when we don’t embroider reality with made up bullshit. The tough part is making sense of it.”
“This week,” he continued, “49% of those surveyed indicate Governor Sarah Palin is not as hot as they first thought, yet 47% are convinced she is hotter than ever. With a 3% margin of error, what am I supposed to do with that?”
Candidates Waging Battle of Quotes, Sources Say
New York, NY — It’s never been more difficult to separate whining from substance. America’s 2008 presidential race is fully engaged, but truth and credibility are not.
The road to the White House is littered with the corpses of shattered reality and common decency — casualties of one of the ugliest, nastiest major U.S. elections since 2004.
Which Cup Is the Old Bean Under?
Last night I heard a front man for McCain bring out a pitch that’s making the rounds: Sure, McCain has had to court the extreme right in order to firm up his base, but maybe when he gets in, the old moderate McCain will reappear. This having-it-both-ways argument suggests an amazing basis for deciding one’s vote: Let’s hope that a man will betray his supporters, once he gets what he wants, and will then turn out to be on our side–and presumably won’t betray us. This probably doesn’t seem odd to Republicans, because their “faith” (all of it) is generated and sustained by public relations concerns. Their goal makes hucksters of them, and they long ago lost the ability to feel shame or a sense of accountability. Hence the ease with which they can argue: “My party screwed everything up over the last eight years…and that’s why we are the ones who can and should be given the chance to make repairs” and “I’m a Washington outsider who has worked in Washington for twenty-six years–but I’m ready, now, to jump in there and pull the rug out from under all those people I have worked with.”
At every turn, McCain demonstrates the ways in which democracy may be destroyed from within. And once this process is set in motion, simple honesty, by itself, is at best an experimental chemotherapy.
Nude Photos Sidetrack McCain Campaign
The 2008 Republican National Convention has had its share of twists and turns so far.
Much like Mr. McCain’s sluggish White House bid, hurricane Gustav launched itself upon the United States with less force than predicted. Many RNC events and speakers were postponed or cancelled in anticipation of Katrina v2.0 — including plans for Ms. Palin to pop out of a comically large cake while clad in a skimpy swimsuit.
Experienced observers of jacked-up elections admit that Ms. Palin might not be hot enough to ride out the ever-growing storm of criticism that surrounds her, leaving the embattled Mr. McCain no option except to throw her under the wheels of his “Straight Talk Express” bus.
Coming Out the Nose
I just saw a TV ad for Flomax that noted possible side effects of “runny nose and a decrease in semen.”
Democratic Convention: Everyone Forgot the Potato Salad
Former President Jimmy Carter, comfortable in his new role of elder statesman and hobbyist diplomat, warned on Monday that his fellow Democrats need to “smarten up” and “stop acting like little bitches.”
“Americans want change, prosperity, and international prestige,” said Mr. Carter, who history will remember as being a much better ex-president than president. “Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership sometimes acts like it couldn’t even organize an explosion at a fireworks factory.”
Found this for Kathy, y’all
“Display only.” I would certainly hope so.
Found this on the way to Charleston, SC for y’all
For Cindy: Bill Murray | Chicago Air & Water Show
3:07 p.m. Bill Murray is in freefall at 120 m.p.h.
Detail piled on detail here.
(Note: There was a hilarious minute-by-minute update of The Event as it unfolded.)
I Told You So What
There I was last weekend, trying on my fancy clothes for the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions, when the news crackled in over the shortwave: Russia had invaded Georgia. My first thought was, “Clever bastards; I always thought they would come in through Florida.” My second thought was, “What took them so long?”
I suppose the defenders’ resistance has been fierce — everyone in that part of the U.S. is heavily armed — but those folks are going to need some help. Maybe we should airlift a couple million pounds of ground beef into the combat zone. That will stop those Bolsheviks in their tracks. E. coli O157:H7 or litigation, whatever it takes. There are almost 1.4 million lawyers in metropolitan Atlanta. Bloody stools and compensatory damages.
Comments on Commercials
- The TV ads in which a Chevy at a gas station is sabotaged by the pump hose were made by people who are much better at what they do than GM is.
- Every time I see the ExxonMobil commercial, in which a man with a short gray beard is suddenly buying mosquito nets for everybody in Africa (which is a good cause), I think of the mob giving money to the Catholic Church.
- When I see a John McCain commercial, I can’t imagine who wouldn’t think that it was a call to look for a person missing from a home.
Apple Store
Went to the Apple store yesterday to get Cindy’s iPod Touch (gift certificate, generously given to her by her staff), which she wanted instead of the phone because she hates phones and the iPod, with wi-fi, lets her do everything she wants to do with such a thing. Jesus–what recession? That place was packed, like a trade show held in a one-room apartment. And everybody but me looked like they had lived in that place for so long–who wouldn’t know how it all works? It all went well though, and I got the Touch and a nice Italian leather case for it. On my way out I saw a woman with her sullen off-to-college-for-the-first-time son, and you wouldn’t believe the stuff she was piling up for him. MacAir, printer, stack of software, big monitor–and a load of all those little things mom would later have to buy again and stuff into his Christmas stocking because he lost them “outside somewhere.” I wanted to hang around to overhear the total, but it was enough to see that Mary Kay didn’t really give a shit how much it was. Strange feeling it all left me with. I like all that stuff too, but I kind of felt like I needed a shower.
The new “is the new”
The phrase blank is the new blank as in “chocolate is the new vanilla” or “ugly is the new pretty” has gotten a little tired lately. What is the new is the new?
Ideas: Candelabras oust chandeliers, Beanless burritos usurp the mantle of burritos with beans.
What are your suggestions?
On John McCain’s Sucking Up to the Christian Right
I love the National Affairs articles in Rolling Stone Magazine, and Matt Taibbi’s “Without a Prayer” in the August 7th issue (1058) is splendid. Only in this magazine, it seems, do you find such fine paragraphs as this one, which describes the last administration and the very one that McCain would seek to continue:
This vision looked unstoppable for a while; there was a time in the early Bush years when this mean-spirited program of flag-waving, gun-toting biblical nationalism looked destined to become a kind of continental religion, a Church of America our missionaries would spread everywhere — and woe to those liberals and Frenchmen and other heretics who didn’t get with the program! Then we left them in office for a while, and it turned out that our would-be nationalist priests were totally stupid and completely incompetent at running anything at all, much less the world economy. And suddenly the red states stopped looking so much red as broke and fucked and responsible for a giant mess that even they didn’t pretend to know the way out of.
New website for designers reaching directors
The body of this post has been deleted. We don’t mind people promoting themselves, or even their products. We would prefer that if the Christopher Walken account is used for this purpose, some effort be made to engage the clusterflock audience and to come across as a person who values the site.
Copying and pasting marketing text isn’t what we would suggest.
Update: Savannah writes:
Hi there,
I’m Savannah, founder of veaux.org
I understand completely wanting to remove us due to the marketing of veaux. The last thing I would want is for people to feel that they are being bombarded with marketers or something that might seem like spam. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what the protocol for blogging really meant. For that I really apologize. If I knew differently, I would have gone about it much differently.
Veaux is something that I created to want to help emerging artists become known in the marketplace and to connect with each other and get work in the process. It’s something I truly believe in and so does the veaux team. The team is very passionate to make Veaux a successful venue for these artists. I don’t want my mistake to take away from that.
If you look at the site and feel that it isn’t what clusterflock or any other blog site wants to post, I understand. If you like it, I would…well…we would like another chance.
My sincerest apologies,
Savannah
One-Way Gate of Praise
From the ticker: “McCain credits Bush for recent $10-a-barrel drop in oil price.” But of course he didn’t blame him for any of the rise in that price. The story notes that McCain believes it is the psychological effect of Bush’s lifting the ban on offshore drilling that did the trick–in spite of the fact that it would be almost twenty years before any oil from those wells hit the market. Funny that the recent news about gigantic oil reserves in Brazil didn’t prevent the rising prices of late.