The Rage Diaries

Fido Dido goes milennial

The NYT has an article today, "Life Is Good for Clothing Company and Its Devotees," that explores the growing number of "Jake" fans -- Jake being the stick-figure mascot for the Life Is Good clothing and accessories line.

I have to admit, it was news to me that Life Is Good had a male-identified public icon, as my primary exposure has been through the long-lived women's athletic gear vendor Title 9 Sports. There, it's all cute icons and the occasional sporty-looking girl stick figure.

But the overall premise, that Jake is something that resonates with people because he embodies the idea that you can be happy with the little things, reminded me of an earlier cartoon-cum-clothing conceit, Fido Dido. From a 1989 NYT article about the character: "The basic message, [Susan] Rose said, is: ''Be relaxed with who you are.''"

Fido Dido popped into existence in 1985. He lives on via used books listings, a licensing firm in Asia and in BBDO's work on a 7Up campaign. (Fun fact: the team that launched Fido Dido then went on to create Angela Anaconda. Who knew?)

Spinning a yarn

One of the side effects of giving up caffeine is that I'm easily overstimulated. I can't go online to blow off steam because I end up falling into some click-and-read-and-click-and-read rabbit hole, and when I'm trying to get out of bed the next day, I'm wondering, "What on Earth made me think 11 p.m. was a fine time to read up on houseplants that detoxify your environment?" If I watch TV, I inevitably end up dreaming about whatever show I was watching, which is in no way restful because I watch a lot of HBO. And reading a book ... I love to read and sitting on the couch to do it before bed is a surefire ticket to me staying up until 2 a.m., chortling deliriously, "What the heck, I might as well finish the book now!"

However, books can be your friends, and when I discovered Katherine Shaughnessy's The New Crewel, it hit me: I could unwind with needlework. It's repetitive enough to be soothing, yet varied enough to be interesting. It doesn't have the built-in handedness bias that has thus far barred from me the worlds of knitting and crocheting. (I am very left-handed. Ask me sometime about the joys of going through elementary school with its right-handed scissors, desks and cursive-writing lessons.)

Shaughnessy's book has a lot of fresh, funky and gorgeous little patterns and she really makes you all fired up about sewing.

Pragmatism is good for the American diet

So a few days ago, I read this post, "Localvores at Walmart?" on WMT's in-house blog, Check Out. The gist of the post is this:

[O]ver the past two years, Walmart’s partnerships with local farmers have grown by 50 percent, and fruits and vegetables grown in any given store’s state now make up over a fifth of what’s available during summer months.  Now, statistics like this are nice, but its particularly cool when you see the results…a few examples:

Until recently, all of the fresh cilantro sold in Walmart stores was sourced from California. Then, Ron’s merchants found a grower named Duda Farms, and soon we started sourcing cilantro from Belle Glade, Florida for distribution in the eastern US.  Introducing Florida-grown cilantro resulted in an estimated savings of 250,000 food miles in a single season.

I liked the post because it was a nice look at how businesses can balances practices that boost their bottom line against practices that are good for the planet.

Post once, get 25 cents off!

Brandcaster is doing something pretty interesting: it's taking the Google AdSense model and using it to try and place coupon offers in contextually-appropriate places. The idea is that rather than head to a typical coupon hub, people who are surfing different sites will see coupons for items that are related to the site and, presumably, their interests.

It's an interesting reversal of the coupon-clippers-seek-out-their-booty model, and it could be a lucrative one. Less than one percent of an estimated 285 billion coupons are redeemed annually. Find a way to shove those coupons in people's faces -- say, my next post on Method's O-mop happens to include a coupon for $1 off the starter kit -- and you're looking at a way to charge those coupon issuers an estimated $400-500 mil in annual revenue.

More details here: "Firm Helps Advertisers Take Aim with Online Coupons," Boston Globe, June 2, 08

My question to all y'all: if coupons were more ubiquitous on the sites you frequented, would you print them out and use them more? Would you do like I do and keep an eye out for those unintentionally amusing juxtapositions between ad placements and site contents?

Just when you thought it wasn't possible to screw over the less-wealthy any more ...

Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.

[...]

The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.

-- "Student Loans Start to Bypass Two-Year Colleges," NYT, June 2, 08

By the way, approximately 40% of the nation's college students go to two-year schools.

As to why banks like Citibank are now paring back the list of schools they'll back with loans: it all comes down to where they can earn the most interest and make the most money. The relatively small loans that go along with community college simply don't make the same bank. I wonder if the kids who can't get the educational loans today are going to be the ones who hurt for credit later in life when they want to get a mortgage or take out a small business loan.

I think I may have found a lucrative sideline

I don't recall whether or not I've told youall this already, but our trip to the Big Island that I was all excited about a few months ago ... was cancelled. We had our tickets on Aloha airlines, and while we were in Blacksburg, that's when we learned that Aloha had shut down operations.

In theory, I was supposed to spend this past week marveling at lava flows at Hawai'i Volcano National Park. In practice, I have been reading about the vog that the park is grappling with and fuming at our credit card company. You see, when we learned that Aloha was shutting down, we turned to each other and said, "Hey! One of the good things about using a credit card to purchase goods and services is that when said goods or services fail to materialize, you can call them up and dispute the charge! Credit card companies even tell you this!"

I first contacted the customer service hotline at our credit card company on April 1. We are still negotiating with the company. We have sent them copies of the billing statement where the tickets showed up (copies which -- heh -- they had to send to us first before we could officially send them back), copies of our e-tickets and proof that we tried to resolve this matter with Aloha airlines before asking the credit card company to eliminate the charge for the service that was not delivered. I look forward to seeing what delaying tactic the card company uses with us next.

And by "look forward," I mean "sublimate my irritation by writing cranky consumer letters." In the past month I have:

-- Heavily edited a letter Phil sent to the San Francisco Giants front office after he had a thoroughly unpleasant experience with some peanut-throwing gibbons in the Oracle suites.

-- Sent an email to Martha Stewart Omnimedia after a peel-down Swiffer ad kept me from clicking a hyperlink five times in a row. I'm okay with ads on websites. I am not okay with the ad completely biffing the entire user experience. It is not a good thing.

-- Sent an email to Dairy Queen denouncing this commercial as sexist and revolting.

-- Sent an email to my representative on the EBMUD board of directors pointing out that an across-the-board 19% reduction in water use effectively punishes people who were already conserving and only provides incentive to whoop it up in the fat times so that the next round of cutbacks doesn't hurt.

With the exception of the last letter, I've received quite nice replies. (As I should, since I wrote quite polite letters.) And someday, Phil will tell you how the Giants made everything okay. But here is the weird and guilty thing: I freakin' love writing these letters. It is better than yoga for reducing the tension in my back.

So now, I have only two things to worry about. First, that I really am on the road to becoming one of those cranks who writes everyone about everything. And second, that I'm never getting my money back from the credit card company. Because if that's the case, I'm going to need to do a lot of letter-writing to get the tension out of my back.

Nogurt

Have you noticed the abundance of yogurt commercials on, say, the DIY Network or Bravo? And how it's always some women yammering on about how they prefer eating a key lime-flavored yogurt to actual, delicious key lime-flavored pie? Then I believe this video will speak to you.

Would you like to know who the yogurt eater in the Schmichaels household is? Hint: it's not the chick.

Wish list archaeology

I got some robot-generated email from Amazon.com today telling me there's no shipping address associated with my wish list. So I rectified that little error and decided to revisit exactly what was on my list. It's sort of a record of my interests over seven years, and as I clicked through page after page, I occasionally saw something and muttered, "Why did I put that on there?"

However, it was more interesting to me to see what interests flare up, which wane and which burn steadily.  I went through and edited out some of the older items, so my flash-in-the-pan manias are no longer in evidence, save the one that hit last Tuesday when I decided I wanted to revisit my girlhood habit of doing counted cross-stitch. (I figure we'll leave that there until the urge to do needlepoint passes.) But seven pages of items gives one a decent idea of where their interests really are. Apparently, I like comics and consumer culture and the fantasy that someday, someone will buy me the entire Star Blazers: Quest for Iscandar series on DVD.

Insofar as accidental historical ephemera goes, it was a fun experience. So I'm throwing it open to you all. Have you looked at your wish lists lately? Do you have anything on there where you're like, "Oh, thank goodness nobody actually bought that for me?" Anything remind you that oh, yeah, you really are the kind of person who'd like to know more about Civil War re-enactors or stained glass art?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Retail

Just a collection of links that connect filthy commerce, media and eco-consciousness:

"Wal-Mart Green Push Supports Earth Month" (BrandWeek, Apr 1, 08) -- "The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said that more than 50 products spanning various aspects of sustainability will be featured on store shelves in April and that more than 500 eco-friendly items will be available at Walmart.com."

"Mags Go Gaga for Green, with Just a Nod to Own Hypocrisy" (AdAge, Mar 31, 08) -- "[A]ny of those green glossies seem determined to test their readers' capacity for cognitive dissonance by editorializing for eco-friendly action on virgin paper that lugs big carbon emissions behind."

(On a related note: I recently picked up a copy of National Geographic Green Guide, and I recommend that anyone who's embarking on a greening of their lifestyle -- or anyone who wants to study magazines -- do likewise.)

"Crate & Barrel Keeps Pulse on Environment" (ChiTrib, Mar 24, 08) -- "As for going green, Crate has got a head start. It got rid of packing peanuts in 2006 and has been moving to eco-friendly catalog practices for years. Last year, it advertised its sustainable furniture in national magazines and just recently created a section on its Web site to tout its green strategy."

Oh, Danny boy, the sites are calling ...

So far today, I have fielded no fewer than three separate "green"-themed e-commerce mails. Save some green, go green this month ... spend some green at our site.

I still have another seventy messages to get through in Gmail.