words mean things

Back from the beyond

Page 159 of 224

Post – October 24, 2001

“[President Bush] is asked who did this, and he says, ‘Evildoers.’ Evildoers. And that’s all I need to know. I don’t need to know the details. I don’t need to know the background. I don’t even want to know.”
-Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor

That’s great, Bill. Good job. We all know how unquestioning, blind obedience to authority is *so* American.

Post – October 24, 2001

Out of curiousity, I watched “Smallville” on the WB last night. Or, as it should more accurately be called, “Superman’s Creek.” Turns out Tom Welling is thankfully a little more everymanish than that freakish and disturbing ad would have had you believe, but he’s still not a good actor. And how many teenage villains can populate Smallville before the tabloids descend? After all, this series is supposed to be set in present day. Thumbs down.

Post – October 24, 2001

Fight Terrorism every time You make a Call with your new,
low 4.5 cents/minute Rate

Bravo to all those enterprising Americans who have used 9/11 to sell everything from crappy clip-on flags to a used Buick. Now, haphazardly-capitalized spam e-mail tells me that I can fight terrorism by switching my long distance carrier. What a wonderful world. As if this weren’t enough, this HTML spam also has an animated graphic of a – surprise – flag, superimposed with the words “Over 800 Free Minutes.”

Make it stop.

Post – October 23, 2001

It’s come to my attention recently that a lot of people who are regular readers of ‘words mean things’ don’t know what I do for a living.

I’m a freelance web designer.
[pause to let snickering die down]

More on that later, but first I wanted to run an idea by you. I recently read a cool book called “Branding Yourself Online,” and one of the suggestions is starting an e-mail newsletter to promote yourself and your services. I’m seriously thinking about starting one, with ideas for people to improve their business web sites. I’ve worked on the web since 1996, so I think I have more than enough ideas to make a good start of it. What do you think?

Post – October 23, 2001

All these myriad personality tests running rampant through the web in general (and weblogs in specific) remind me of my father. He was incredibly curious about humanity and what made people tick. Whenever he would come upon any sort of personality test he’d never seen before, he would want everyone he knew to take it as well. He was particularly fond of one color swatch test, where you would choose from a group of (I think it was 10) color swatches and rate them, from the one you liked the most to the one you liked the least. They came bundled with a book that allowed you to look up each person’s order and get a personality reading from that. I wish I remembered the name of the book – anyone remember this? One interesting thing about the swatches was they weren’t clear colors; they were all slightly off.

That sort of sums up my entire personality, come to think of it – “slightly off.”

Post – October 23, 2001

Overheard on the Cluetrain e-mail list:

> > Gotta admit, the title “Office of Homeland Security” rings
> > a deep warning bell somewhere…
> > some elusive historical association, I think…:)
>
> It wasn’t the administration’s original choice, but they were
> unable to secure the trademark on “Fatherland.”

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 words mean things

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑