haircuts

I just got a new haircut - finally. Having recently moved to Grand Haven, I had to figure out where to get a haircut around here. Fortunately, surprisingly, freakishly, coifishly , mind-bogglingly, there are lots of places to get a haircut just up the street.

I'm even pretty happy with the results. Sylvia says it's her favorite so-far. So, as bizarre as 10 haircut places within easy walking distance and 100 more within 15 miles seems to me, I don't think it compares to how wacky this is:



Special thanks to The Chris for blogging that haircut.

Chumble Spuzz

My friend D'Arcy sent me this blog post about learning English as a second language and using children's blocks to illustrate the language.

Everything starts out innocently enough:


And moves on to some interesting translations:


Then a little stranger:

Where's your epidiascope anyway?

After that, it just gets scary.

Moving Steve to Violence

Some of you may know Steve from a previous post - the one with the giant gum ball.

Steve

My friend Steve works for Yahoo! Steve and I have known each other for about 13 years, back when he was a student and I was on staff at Calvin College. Later Steve worked for me as a student and some time later on staff before he moved to California (swimming pools, movie stars) and Silicon Valley. When Steve was a student, a few of us around the office made up a game called "move Steve to violence".

The object was to say or do something that would move the normally well balanced Mr. Steve, a mild-mannered software developer, to a state of uncontrollable rage and of course, violence. The violence expressed itself in a variety of ways, from actual physical beatings, to a hand simply raised and poised for a strike.

Over the years, Steve, in his good-natured way, has allowed me to keep this game going and with this picture posted on his flickr pages, I had to relate a story from last week.

Recently the news has been afflicted with stories of Microsoft making a play for Steve's home turf. I sent Steve, the passionate Mac user, a text message that read, "So, are you MS Steve yet?"
To which he replied, "I am permanently moved to violence."
Thanks Steve.


What moves you to violence? (Nerf-gun violence counts, don't let Steve try to tell you differently)

Worst moment ever II

Poor guy - no belt

Poor guy.
Ezekiel was helping me move some stuff. However, he wasn't wearing a belt and his pants dropped to the ground. With his hands full. Sylvia and I had to stop and take a picture, with his permission of course.
Zeke is awesome.

Possibly worse than the previous worst moment ever!

Spoiler Alert

There are no spoilers in this blog - I don't believe in them. I'm not stupid, I know they exist, I'm just not going to be someone who creates a spoiler. I think it's just common courtesy. A certain movie theater on the other-hand was not so courteous.

I went to see Cloverfield with Sylvia and Ezekiel.
The theater in question has started a little, what I like to call, "customer service moment" after the trailers, but before the feature. It's bad enough that I've had to adjust my arrival time to the theater such that I miss the genuine commercials, but still catch the trailers. Now they send a kid who fancies himself a thespian out to tell us how wonderful DLP technology is. Then they play the DLP trailer, and then the movie.

This time the kid came out and did not mention the millions of colors, the sparkling clarity nor even the marvelous contrast ratio provided by the DLP experience. Nay, he stepped out into the role of the film critic.

I should point out that I don't like to know too much about movies before I go to them I want to enjoy the experience and be surprised. Some movies, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. Those are annoying. I had managed to shield myself from most things about the movie before I got there. I knew from the trailer that something happened, everyone was scared, and we might see some of it through a hand-held home video camera.

So, when the kid stepped out to talk about DLP and instead started talking about the movie, he revealed certain truths about the movie that I did not know before that moment.

sigh...

I'm not going to tell you anything about it other than what I thought of the movie. Ready? If you don't want to know what I thought, don't read any more. In fact, I'm placing this image here again so that you won't go any further if you don't want to.




It
Was
AWESOME!!!
If you see one movie this month - go see that. It's got everything a great summer blockbuster needs, except the summer.
WOW!!!
Whew!
Great movie...
Yeah!

Go to the mattresses

The time has come to buy a new bed. It was time to go to the mattresses.

I visited a number of furniture stores and carefully avoided a particular chain of furniture stores. Hint - the sales staff descend on shoppers like a horde of locusts, and they advertise... a lot! And the initials of the store are "Art" "Van". However, on a limited budget, I eventually walked through the doors.
I made a B-line for the mattresses and carefully avoided any eye contact that might encourage the sales-folk to pounce. I think they can smell you when you come in, or maybe they have chips installed in their heads that ping when the doors open. In any case, I wasn't going to give them the opportunity to jump me.

After about 30 seconds in the mattresses, walking past the $3500 Tempurpedics and down to the other end, Jon showed up. I put on my "polite, but just looking" face and returned his greeting. He said,

"If you have any questions, I'll be right over there,"

pointing to a kiosk across the way a bit.

I was shocked to say the least. No pitch, no fake friendliness. Where was I?

I found a mattress I wanted, the price was good, and I was ready to make a purchase. I looked up to see if Jon was around. There he was, right where he said he'd be. He hadn't come around to check on me or anything. He did just what he said he would do. Weird.

He rang up my sale including a new mattress pad, which he carried out to my car for me. Then he thanked me for my business. Weird.

I felt that I needed to say something. I thanked him for his time and told him that I really appreciated the way he gave me the space I needed to make a purchase. Jon kinda smiled and said,

"Yeah, we know what the reputation is out there, and some of us are trying to change that."

It's working.

When I started this story, you might have had a visceral reaction to the words "Art Van". You might have thought to yourself - No Way. I'm here to tell you that at least one person over there gets it and is trying to do the right thing. So, now I'm an Art Van evangelist?

I found the whole shebang to be a big metaphor for Christianity. My own experience was that I was really turned off to the hypocrites I knew. People who claimed to be Christians - all that love junk - but didn't behave consistently with their talk. Then I met just a couple of people who were trying really hard to live the way they talked and their deep desire was to see me connect with the creator of the universe.

Weird

One person's genuine faith and love made all the difference to me. There's a new book out there called unChristian. For Christians it's a wake up call that Christianity has an image problem. Young Americans see Christians kind of the way I thought about the Art Van sales staff. If you don't know what our reputation is, pick up the book and read it.

We know what the reputation is out there, and some of us are trying to change that. It's time to go to the mattresses.

Weird

my whiteboard

From time to time I write something on my whiteboard that stays up there for a while.
I've usually borrowed them from somewhere.
Sometimes they are clever like this Haiku:

Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Sometimes they are relatively profound:

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

Sometimes they are wacky, like this one my boss said a few weeks ago:

"My mom thinks she's having some dementia. She's not, but she thinks she is."

Thanks Robby.

New Year Foreshadowing

Happy New Year

I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I went out to my car this morning - headed to church - and when I clicked my little key fob to unlock the doors, the alarm went off. At first, I thought it was because I pushed the wrong button, but then I realized that there was something wrong.
Something very wrong.
There's glass all over the place.
Someone tried to break into my car last night and was successful - with a brick. Half of the brick is sitting outside the car, and half of it is inside. In this picture you can see the dents they made in the door frame near the top when they must have been throwing that brick over and over. These would-be thieves also have bad aim.
I had my new GPS and my iPod in plain site. Yes, I'm that dumb. I'm grateful that they didn't actually take anything. Since they were successful at eventually breaking into the MirthMobile, but didn't take anything, I'm guessing that the alarm did go off and scare them away. That would also explain why the alarm sounded when I tried to unlock the car at the beginning.
Now some thankful moments...
1) Thanks to Tiffany over at Progressive. She was very nice and made the process of reporting my claim easy.
2) Thanks to Officer Brian Barry from the Kentwood Police Department for coming around and making the police report easy.
3) I'm thankful that they didn't take anything.
Now some dork moments...
1) There's snow all around the carport - meaning that indeed there are footprints in the snow leading to and leading away from my car.
2) I mocked myself for the CSI-type of thoughts I had.
3) I'm pretty sure that the foot prints are from Converse sneakers, about a men's size 9.
I shared my self mocking with Officer Brian and he also mocked me... "We can probably get some casts of these prints... naaaaahhh"

Nice...

Have yourself a creepy little Christmas

I've really been thinking about a certain Christmas Carol this year - Up On The Housetop - maybe you know the one? I've pasted in the lyrics below for your reference. I'm really OK with the chorus. I mean, who wouldn't go? I'm even OK with the first two verses, they tell a lovely little story about Santa Claus. The dolly for little Nell sounds precious.
I find myself stumbling on the stocking of little Will. What's this freak get for Christmas?
- a hammer
- lots of tacks
- a whistle
- a ball
- a whip
I'm sorry, but that's just creepy. Besides potential problems with child-labor laws, I'm concerned that for his birthday this kid is also getting half a pound of C4.
Perhaps I should point out that back in the olden days when B.R. Hanby wrote this song, there was no Nintendo. Little boys had to make their own fun out of wood and string.

Up On The Housetop

Up on the housetop reindeer pause
Out jumps good old Santa Clause
Down thru the chimney with lots of toys
All for the little ones
Christmas joys.

Chorus

Ho, ho, ho!
Who wouldn't go!
Ho, ho, ho!
Who wouldn't go!
Up on the housetop
Click, click, click
Down thru the chimney with
Good Saint Nick

First comes the stocking
Of little Nell
Oh, dear Santa
Fill it well
Give her a dolly
That laughs and cries
One that will open
And shut her eyes

Repeat Chorus

Next comes the stocking
Of little Will
Oh, just see what
A glorious fill
Here is a hammer
And lots of tacks
A whistle and a ball
And a whip that cracks

Repeat Chorus

And I'm not alone. Morgan is also clearly disturbed.

Facebook wackiness

So it turns out that "Brian Atkinson" is a rather popular name, and people find me on facebook and think I'm someone else with the same name. Nothing I've ever had to deal with before. Here's a recent exchange with someone named Ruben.


It should be known that when I wrote:

Wait, wait!
Is this: http://tinyurl.com/2alp3w
you?

The link went to this sandwich:

Ruben is my new best friend.

"Congratulations"

I'm an occasional contributor to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, as some of you may know.

It's not one of those grammar-police blogs, but a just-for-fun snarky comment blog about the inappropriate use of quotes and their funny and not-so-hidden meanings.

The "good news" about the "blog" is that it just cracked the top 1,000 most popular blogs on the internet. So - "congratulations" to Bethany and all the other contributors!

We're number 997!
Yeah!

Home Improvement

The local and national news was all over this story today and I had to weigh in on it.



This guy named Steve Flaig just found his birth-mother. I'm overjoyed for him and I'd love to talk to him about his experience. The goofy thing of course is that when he met her, he found out that they work together at Lowes.
Seriously...
Mlive
WoodTV
MSNBC
Truemors
Is God awesome or what?



Why I'm excited about it.

A quick Christmas list

Usually we make Christmas lists for things we want instead of things we've done. However, every year some people write those Christmas letters listing and describing their accomplishments for the past year. Here's my list:
1) Name change
Following my recent adoption I've done most of the name-change stuff.

2) Followed by another Comcastic moment
Changing the name on my power, gas, bank, email, phone and a ton of other stuff that you have to change when your name changes was really pretty easy. Most of them took a phone call and sometimes an email with my old and new drivers license attached and that was that. Comcast took things to a whole new level of annoying and funny. First of all I couldn't just call. I couldn't email or fax them proof of my new name. I had to go to their office. Really? Yes, I had to go to a building so that their crack customer service staff could inspect my documentation and then change the name on my account. In truth, they inspected my documents, called a supervisor who also inspected my documents and then they gave me a form. They typed in a bunch of stuff on a computer and printed a form. They handed it to me to fill out. Most of what I needed to fill out they had typed into the computer, but it didn't appear on the form. Now that's all pretty Comcastic, but did you know that they accomplished all of this Comcastic customer service from behind one-and-a-half inches of bullet-proof glass? Oh yes.
Don't make your customer service so great that they staff gets thank you Christmas fruitcakes from grateful subscribers. No, protect your customer service staff from the so-angry-that-they-might-become-violent customers.
Way to go Comcast!

3) Didn't give anyone a fruitcake

4) Taught some people about RSS

You see here my Google Reader showing my friend Chris' blog. Until just a bit ago - no RSS. Now... RSS and I can subscribe to his blog. I taught Brooke, and she taught Chris.

I think that's how the Gospel is supposed to work too. Please let me know if you want to know what I mean. brianatkinson [at] mirthmobile [dot] com

Merry Christmas.

PS - ** didn't give anyone this kind of stuff.

Christmas for me

Come on you do it too!
You get yourself a little something-something for Christmas don't you? After-all, what's the spirit of giving without making sure you get just what you want.



This year I got myself some direction in life.
It's an older-model very basic GPS for my car. I set it up with the British English voice, so now I have this exotic sounding car-girlfriend. I'm driving the 16 hours to Gulfport, Mississippi this year. I think I will appreciate this gift to myself.



I also had 5000 Tivo points to use before they expired. So I used them to get another remote. My three-year-old remote is just fine. It works like a champ. But this one has flames! Seriously, how senselessly cool is that?

Looking ahead - into the mouth of despair

It's that time of year again. If you haven't selected a calendar for 2008, they make great Christmas gifts.

The lovely people at despair.com have their 2008 customizable calendars available and you might already know who desperately needs one of these.

I on the other-hand need someone to purchase this t-shirt for me. Size XL.

Day of the Ninja

Today is the 2007 Day of the Ninja.
It's the day when all ninjas together with non-ninjas (non-jas) gather in their normal everyday locations, in their secretive ninja attire. Don't confuse this with Talk Like A Pirate Day which involves no costumes and is all about your piratey language; especially since ninjas are silent.

Want to participate? All you have to do is pretend you are a ninja.

There's plenty to see and do today.
Check out Ask a Ninja and learn about the origins of Day of the Ninja.
Visit the official NinjaDay2007 site

If you're not prepared with a ninja costume today, learn how to make a ninja mask out of a t-shirt.

Today, the whole world is just a little deadlier.

worst moment ever

worst moment ever

Maybe something like this has happened to you?
Something awful happens. You're not sure if you should tell anyone.
It's humiliating.
It's terrible.
It's hilarious.
So, after a few days, you go ahead and tell everyone you know.

Yeah...
So has something like that ever happen to you?

1977 was not for the faint of heart

Thanks to the plethora of people who emailed me the pictures and captions for this one. Steve gets extra points for sending me a link to the blog where it started about a month ago and deciding that he wouldn't clog the internet with pictures. Nice going Steve! Please note that if you follow any of the links below the comments contain a bad word. It's a bad word that appears in the bible on several occasions and refers to a donkey. If you don't like that word, please don't click on the links. There are some other words that lots of people object to. Some of them actually written out and others with cleverly placed characters in place of some of the letters so that you don't have to read the complete w*rd. I normally wouldn't link to a page that contained those words - but these are too good to pass up. I'll make my own snarky comments below about some of the pictures.




Strap in, shut up and hold on. We're going back. Yes, it's a collection of snappy comments about the JCPenney 1977 Summer catalog.









Here's a picture of me at age 10. Shoes to match the belt were available on page 478.
















Here's a guy who went to my church standing next to Scott Bakula (from Quantum Leap and Star Trek - Enterprise)

















Then there is a series of matching outfits for couples. I'll have to discuss that with Sylvia before I invent a time machine and buy them for us. Mmmmm... but Christmas is just around the corner. What a nice surprise they would make!















Finally, this is actually me on my first day of kindergarten in 1972. That's a luggage tag on my shirt-zipper just in case I got lost. Please note the fancy navy blue socks with the sneakers and my left hand in a jaunty pose. Clearly, by the position of my feet in the imaginary starter's blocks - I'm raring to go.


Ready... aim... fire!

SkyMall never lets me down

SkyMall never lets me down

If you ever travel by commercial airliner, you know about SkyMall. It's that rather thick tome in the seat pocket in front of you that hawks untold useless junk that no one should ever own.

However, my recent trip to Minneapolis revealed the worst one yet. Right there on page 6 was the TimeMug.

The TimeMug!
Does it let you travel through time as you sip a bracing cup of joe?
No!
Does it save time within its cavernous maw?
Naw!
Does it help you tell time in a clutch?
Not so much....

The time mug is the world's first and ONLY 100% dishwasher safe, time-telling drinkware!

To the giant brains behind the TimeMug: there's a reason why it's the first and only.

Gospel.com goes live

Normally this blog is relegated to the strange and wonderful things that I observe or that people send to me. Today I wish to depart momentarily from that format to brag about the place where I work just a bit and maybe for the first time help you understand a little of what I do for a living - which is only a little wacky.

I work at Gospel Communications International. My title is Manager of Alliance Development. The Alliance is a community of Christian organizations, banded together to make an impact for Christ online. I encourage our members to fully engage in doing their individual ministries online, rather than just run an online brochure about their ministry.

My company along with the alliance community launched a new site today.

Gospel.com

It's the content from the alliance sites bookmarked by them - and tagged with keywords which turn into topics. For example: apologetics.

It also dynamically creates micro-sites about each ministry. For example: mirthmobile.

Since it's gone live just a few minutes ago - the search engines won't index it quite yet, but in the near future when you do search for a topic contained in Gospel.com or one of our alliance members, gospel.com will have an enormous impact on those search results. That's good news for our community, but it's also good news for people who need help with the topics we cover - for example divorce - something I've recently experienced.

I'm so proud of everyone on our whole internet ministry team and everything they've done to make this new site a reality. Thanks everyone!

DON'T CONFORM

DON'T CONFORM

All of you! Don't conform! Stop it right now!

The Dave Ramsey booth at the Catalyst conference in Atlanta this year gave away these very popular shirts that say, "don't conform." They asked everyone to wear them at the same time. Seriously.

I also got one of these shirts but I'm waiting to wear it until I know there won't be anyone else around wearing one.

yahoo??

Yahoo! didn't actually do this did they?



Yes... they did.

Thanks to Jonathan for the heads up! Apparently it came in a large box with a cut out for the over-sized button, and a slot for some other type of promotional material - but there was nothing in that slot.

To Halloween or not to Halloween

Each year as the end of October approaches I find myself caught up in conversations about Halloween. To some, this is a fairly innocuous day, and to others it is tantamount to selling one's soul to the devil. Being that I'm someone who tries to follow Christ and tries to still live in the tangible world, you can imagine that those conversations have a range. Feel free to wade in on that if you like.

Here are some Halloween type links to some wacky and some just plain awful web pages.
Boo on a Budget
Ruprecht the Psychic Chicken's Haunted House
Creepy Classics
Carving Pumpkins used to be free, but now $8 will get you the patterns for an amazing Jack-O-Lantern.

Some costume observations:
Men - Pirates
Men want to be pirates. We used to want to be cowboys and some other stock characters until the Village People used some of the best ones. Now, many of us are afraid go out in our police officer, Indian Chief, or leather-biker outfits for fear of confusion.

Women - Princess becomes Witch
Little girls want to be a princess or something like that. This includes the ballerina, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and other permutations of the princess theme. However, something happens as girls become women. The little princess at some point decides to become a witch instead, and then as she gets a little older - the slutty witch. How does that happen?

Thanks to my friend Brenda who helped me think that through a while back.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

The Apocalypse starts today

The Apocalypse starts today

Good news! Macy's has cracked the biblical code and figured out that the Last Days start today and run through Sunday. Not only is it the end of time but Macy's is also celebrating the original sin (the Fall) with a sale! Based on the Left Behind novels and movies, you might not want to get in on the apparel sale.

If you were going to buy something, knowing that the world ended on Sunday, what would you buy?

First Time

First Time

I've had a borrowed vacuum cleaner from Jessica for the last year but today I purchased a new one. It's one of those canister/HEPA-filter/bag-less/gyroscopic/whirlwind/tornado/hurricane types. I've been vacuuming semi-regularly all along, but once I put the new one together, I gave it the once-around-the-joint tour. Here's the damage from the first pass with the new fancy vacuum.

I feel so dirty.

Do you Yaaarrrr?

Avast!
It's September 19 - do you know what day it is?

Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Not one of the better known Hallmark Holidays, but definitely one of my favorites.
And guess what? It also falls right in the middle of National Singles Week.

Shiver me timbers, this be a double celebration for the likes of me. If ye be not a scurvy dog, tell us all how you'll be celebratin'. Yaaarrr!

Arrrrrggggghhh! This video takes a while to load.


Yaaarrr! And this be the first day of the conference I'm responsible for, The Internet Ministry Conference. If ye be the prayin' kind, I'll be much obliged if ye'd include me for the next few days. Arrrrr.

PS - Flickr or FlickARRRRR updated their logo.

Brian this is Brian

So today my office released this video to describe my change from Brian Melles to Brian Atkinson.



It was a pile of fun to shoot and produce.
Big thanks to my friend Paul who manned the camera and the video editor, and thanks to Gospel Communications for making this goofy process so easy for me.

Fightin Amish

I've gone ahead and designed a shirt for Shirt Woot I need a bunch of people to vote for it so that the design will be selected for printing. So - vote early, vote often. Just click the shirt to vote.

The shirt is in honor of my Fantasy Football team name: The Fightin' Amish. This is my second year playing and this year I actually thought about it a little. In other words, I didn't pick the Bears Defense with my first pick.

We had our draft on Saturday and here's my starting lineup:
Postion Name Team Round
QB: Phil Rivers (SD) 6
RB: Larry Johnson (KC) 1
RB: Marion Barber (DAL) 4
WR: Chad Johnson (CIN) 2
WR: T.O. (DAL) 3
TE: Owen Daniels (HOU) 8
DEF: Patriots (NE) 9
K: Jason Elam (DEN) 14
O: Brandon Jackson (GB) 7
or Javon Walker (DEN) 5

First game is Thursday. Feel free to mock me.

Unfortunate sign

Unfortunate sign

I'm not sure how much I need to write about this sign. Except to point out that it appeared next to the Wok-N-Roll.

yeah... that's a shame.

going out on a limb

I'm tapping into my spiritual gift of prophesy here and calling ABC television's Fall release "Cavemen" the worst idea for a television show ever.

Based on the GEICO pitchmen...
I really don't think I need to write anything else about that do you? Special guest stars: the GEICO Gecko, the Aflac Duck, and in a bizarre twist, the Adams Family's Thing returns to TV as the hands from Allstate.

Following trends, be sure to set your Tivo to record:
CBS - Elves - based on the Kellogg's Rice Krispies mascots Snap, Crackle, and Pop who star as three best friends rooming together at college. Laugh your misshapen hats off as these three elves learn to get along in the modern day college co-ed environment. And you just might learn something if you're not careful.

NBC - It's Chad! - featuring Chad from the Alltel spots along with his pals from the other major carriers. A buddy comedy that tries to answer the question, what level Dungeon Master are you?

FOX - Beer Girls (working title) - a reality contest show involving the spokes-models from the last 3 years of beer ads.

CW - Clear Away - a young adult drama starring the kids from recent acne cream commercials. So fresh and squeaky-clean, you'll barely notice all the cleavage and shirtless guys.

TBS - World's Funniest Commercials, hosted by Kevin Nealon - Some programs are shown free of commercial interruption...but not this one! Tune in Wednesday night for the only show on television that consists entirely of commercial interruption.

So bad, I didn't even need to make that one up.

So awful, a caveman would watch it.

Wasted time

5 minutes and 40 seconds of wasted time.
Watch the whole thing for the lame payoff, or scroll ahead to 5:09 to watch Napoleon and Bill dance.



If you make videos for trade shows, please don't do this.

Left behind

Special thanks this week to Randy Bonifield for his performance. And thanks to the nearly overwhelming chunk of email I received from a bunch of people.

Christians - it's OK to poke fun of ourselves, especially when we deserve it. It's also OK for everyone else to make fun of us when we get things wrong.



There's no way that I can actually debunk all of the misconceptions around the second-coming of Christ as portrayed in the Left Behind novels and movies. The only thing we can be sure of is that Jesus is coming back. We won't know when (like a thief in the night). It seems pretty likely that it will be in Jerusalem and he will come out of the East. We probably won't disappear and have our clothes Left Behind like it showed in the movie. What we're wearing might not matter so much.

What do you think about that?

If a comment isn't quite the right place for a question or thought you have around what I'm talking about, please don't hesitate to shoot a note my way: brianatkinson [at] mirthmobile.com

Go ahead and leave a comment if you want - I think this could be some good discussion.

A short list

Today I present this short list of random wackiness.
Please note that the items in this list are a bit of a departure from the usual wackiness. They are a little blue.

1) The dumbest spam message about, um... well aren't all spam messages about this?

"Make sure you have enough room in your car if you plan on enlarging your ____ ..."

Am I the only one getting these messages then?

2) The Wackiest video I've seen lately - Thanks Paul.
Neither I nor this website condones cheating on one's spouse. That is a really bad idea.

3) One for you cat haters - Mr. Marbles the prop dead cat
Please note, this is not a real cat - just a prop.

Brian Simpson

No, it's not another name change, but a fancy gadget from Burger King and the Simpsons Movie called Simpsonize Me.

Thanks to Steve and Amy for that!

My take on the movie (no spoilers) - a really great episode in extended form, built for the theater, and pointing out all the things that they can't do on broadcast television. I had a great time and will see it again, and likely buy the DVD.

Here's me at the KWIK-E Mart

and in front of the Krustylu Studios

Garfield Zen

Reading comics with my brother Chris today, he described a Garfield randomizer with the explanation,

They're not worse [than the actual Garfield comics].

Here's the second random one I hit:


Zen

Who's your monkey?

Sometimes I wish I had a horde of Carnival Monkeys to do my bidding. Mostly they would respond to my email for me. I wonder what I would call them...
(insert dream sequence effect and sounds here)
-------------

(enter Brian's dream world of Carnival Monkeys...)
My right hand monkey is Sebastian. He is excellent for delegation and management.
#2 is Flouncy and she takes care of the sensitive messages.
#3 - Cleo is assigned to triage, evaluating most messages and farms them out to the monkeys overseas in India as needed. That's why when you email me you may not get responses for quite some time. He (yes, Cleo is a he) also redirects some to Flouncy and Sebastian.

Then in no particular order:
Alice, Martin, Tony, Boris, Essie, Penny, Paul, Poppins, Ramsey, Mr. DePinna, Ed, Mrs. Kirby, Rheba, Donald, Jason, Daddy-o,

So... that's 19 plus the overseas staff. I think they have a lot of them over there.

What would you name your carnival monkey?

Things on my plate

I've had a few things on my plate since my last post, so here's the update:

New Plate

1) I turned 40
2) my birth mother adopted me
3) I got a new plate for the MirthMobile

Michigan decided to change out their old blue plates with white letters and replace them with white plates with blue letters. Way to go Michigan! For my 40th birthday I got to go to the Secretary of State (DMV for everyone else in the USA) to renew my registration, license, and replace my old plate MIRTH1. I had the MIRTH1 for several years because someone named Mirth had the MIRTH plate. She let it go and I pounced.


Here's the old plate:

You may notice a license plate frame around the old plate and a partial one around the new one. There is a story there.

At the end of 2004 I took my current job a Gospel Communications. The office is about 60 miles from my home and I had no intention of moving, so I got my car checked out by the local Chrysler dealer. I got some work done and the final price was considerably higher than I had discussed or authorized. I was angry, but nonetheless needed my car, so I paid the price and went on. Some time later I noticed that they put a license plate frame on my car - without my permission.

I sent them this letter along with an invoice for $984.15 - the precise amount of the repairs to my car:
________

Highland Chrysler Jeep
1350 28th Street SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49508


To whom it may concern;
Thank you for choosing your advertising space so judiciously!

I have a long history of providing the best in mobile advertising for a relatively small cost. I was pleased to find that Highland Chrysler Jeep chose to use my services for advertising and I’m sure that the traffic seen by your advertisement is worth the expense.

Your mobile advertisement travels from a residential section of Caledonia Township in South-East Kent county to a location on Apple Avenue in Muskegon every weekday and throughout Kent, Ottowa and Allegan counties on weekend days. In fact there is a trip planned for this weekend that will bring your advertising message to a variety of new potential customers.

The most exciting part of mobile advertising for me is that you never even contacted me about spending your valuable advertising dollars with my service. One day, following a service procedure at your establishment I found the advertising and I have proudly displayed it ever-since. I have tried on numerous occasions to contact your service manager, [name], to thank him for the opportunity to fullfil your advertising needs, but he has not returned my calls. [name] was very helpful when he said he would let Mike know that I called and have him call me back, but that has not happened yet.

Please find enclosed your first quarterly invoice for rental of the advertising space and a picture showing a close-up of your message at work. Please make your check payable to Brian Melles and send it to the address listed above and below upon receipt of this invoice. If for any reason you wish to terminate your rental agreement with me prior to the end of the current billing period (January 24, 2005) I will happily pro-rate the invoice. Otherwise, I’m sure you agree that the money you spend advertising with me is well-spent, I’ll continue billing Highland Chrysler Jeep on a quarterly basis.

Additionally, next quarter, I’m running a special promotion that will put this information on my website for the low price of only $150 per month (regular price $300 per month) that’s a savings of 50% on the web advertising alone, and we all know how effective web-based advertising can be. In keeping with your previous method, I’ll go ahead and take care of that for you, and send you another invoice at the end of next quarter unless I hear from you differently.

Thanks again for using my services this way!
________

I received a phone call a few days later and discussed the matter with them. Not only were they not willing to pay for the advertising (duh), nor were they willing to discuss even a partial refund, but they also didn't want the license plate frame back, and they also didn't have the original screws that came with my car which did not have the extra space for the frame. Now. without the frame, the plate would bang and clatter loosely on the back of my car. I broke the frame up into pieces and used only the top portion to finish securing my license plate to the back end. Highland did offer me 10% off of my next service. I respectfully declined to take advantage of that.

Altogether an experience just as bad as any Comcastic customer service opportunity. When presented with the opportunity to turn an unhappy customer into a happy one, why do companies continually choose to keep their customers unhappy? All people with a service should start reading Seth Godin's blog to learn the basics. Seriously, it's been over two years and I'm still honked off enough to take the time to blog about it - and more than once. Don't get me started on my 1993 State Farm Insurance story!

So, Highland Chrysler Jeep - please enjoy this belated, but still appropriate, finger from me to you.