Sneaker Pimps

No, not the cool kind, the other ones.


Unless you're just of the telemarketing mindset and you only care about converting 2% of your contacts, then you need to request link exchanges in a more personal style than this:

Hi,

I'm glad that I came across your site wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com. You have some very useful and interesting content there. I will put a link to your site from my site, if this is fine with you.

I help run a store called [lame replica sneaker store dotcom] it's not really a big one, but it's getting there. Please have a look. If you could possibly place a small link of my site, that would be really great.

Have a great day and hope to hear from you.

When you start off lying to me, it will be hard for us to ever establish a good relationship. Clearly, you know nothing about this site, and you obviously sent this email to thousands of other bloggers. A more compelling way to prove to me that you really did find some "useful and interesting content here" might be to reference an actual post. Further, if I start driving traffic to you by providing a link to your cheap shoe store, what are your tracking mechanisms and how will I be compensated if one of my clickers buys your cheap, ugly knock-off shoes? Maybe I'm just one more tool to be ripped off by you, the way you're ripping off Nike and Puma and Reebok with your lookalike shoes?

You see the links over there on the right panel? Those are people with ideas and stories and content I don't mind being associated with. Maybe someday I will entertain the notion of an ad or two for a product or service that I use and appreciate, but I'm not running a link farm for your lameness.

Seven (Future) Things About Me

During the last round of "Seven Things About Me," the blogger meme where you tell....yes... seven (likely unknown) things about yourself...I opted out when a few of my virtual friends asked me to play along, citing my previous involvement in the game.

I've rethought it and decided to play, but with a twist.

I will reveal seven things about my future self, and then call out a few bloggers to do the same.

1. After the publication of my epic saga and the subsequent sale of the movie rights to Spike Lee (who was in a bitter bidding war with Ron Howard), I was able to move to Adelaide, SA and became a citizen of Australia. I think it was the appointment of Sean Hannity as Secretary of Patriotism by President Limbaugh that finally tipped the scales.
2. I finally learned to surf, but finding surf in SA without great white sharks isn’t easy.
3. We have a vineyard and farm in the Barossa Valley. We make some wine, but we always end up drinking it all or giving it away as gifts. The farm is mostly an excuse for our dog to practice sheep herding, which he sucks at.
4. Whenever we visit the States (maybe once a year, lately) we like to mess with people by acting like we can’t understand them through their thick accents.
5. Our daily 30-minute show (Monday-Friday, live online) Radio Free Babylon, was banned in Saudi Arabia. Again. After that, Pepsi stopped sponsoring us, leaving the door open for Coke. The contract says we have to drink it on-camera, but I usually spike mine.
6. During the Canadian-American War, I started stockpiling weapons, water and food. Don’t come looking for them.
7. I can finally speak Spanish fluently, which is useless down here.

And now, your turn:

Bill
Kym
Kaitlyn
Chimp
Lori
MMM
Stan
Broad
Corey

Seven Other Places

Links can be your ticket to riches!
(Sometimes referred to as "Affiliate Marketing.")

Here are seven other places you could be right now on this great big webbed thing we call the Intertube.

1. Pork Earmarks. Speckles is out of touch and Unfit to Lead.
2. Baltimore's own M.M. McDermott explains why Gates/Seinfeld were successful for Microsoft.
3. Rick Sanchez is twitting, tweeting and facebooking the hell out of the Wall Street thing.
4. Drew sometimes strikes out. Drawing two comics a day will do that to anyone. He hits a homer with "Interview over Lunch."
5. Leave Alec Alone! "Like a bareback unicorn orgy on a cloud made of rainbow colored cookie dough."
6. "He's on the agency side, she's on the client side." (Sounds like the lead-in to a sitcom.) A new ad blog called "Married to the Enemy."
7. Uncle Sam comin' to get ya! (From my other blog, a place to indulge my other personalities, because admitting you're insane is the first step toward recovery.)

Seven Other Places

Here are 7 other places you can be right now.
(But I will open the link in a new browser window so you stay your ass right here!)

• Carnies for McCain
• There's Strong, and there's Abercrombie Strong
• Contextual Ad Disaster
• Henry goes shopping. Full of fail.
• Expect to see this picture for a long time to come
• Sarah Palin's (fake) blog
• Lazy blogger post generator

I'm a Bad Blogger

Apologies to my blogging buds, whom I've neglected by not commenting on their blogs regularly as I used to. Reason is the Evil Corporate Masters, who prevent me from seeing anything with the suffix of .blogspot, .typepad or .wordpress. I can see you in my reader and always read your stuff, but that's it. Unless I get to you at home after work or on the weekends, I'm a negligent blogger.

Apologies to AdRants, AdScam, Agency Tart, American Copywriter, Catch Up Lady, Brand DNA, Chimp Media Monitoring, Copyranter, Every Sandwich, Hespos, Heybeus, Life in the Garden, Married to the Sea, Make The Logo Bigger, Mental Hygiene, MultiCult Classics, New York Punk, RayTube, Renegade Agency Confessional, Scamp, Texan in Hippieland, The AdHole, The Daily (Ad) Biz, The Assimilated Negro, Thinking in Vain, Toadstool, Why Advertising Sucks, Yes But No But Yes, Yonder Ponder.

Some of you have also been very negligent, not posting to your own blogs in months. Blogging is tough work, I know, but if you remain dormant, I've got to pull you from the "Linkers and Lurkers" list and replace you with something new. No offense, but if you've quit, I'm not keeping you around out of respect for your blog's memory. Not that I don't respect your blog's memory...but you know what I mean.

On the plus side, Evil Corporate Masters today announced a permanent switch from Business Casual to Totally Casual all the time, not just on Fridays. So maybe not so Evil after all.

Seven Other Places

Here are seven other places you could be right now on this fascinating World Wide Waste of Time.

• Fred Leo of Every Sandwich analyzes the gang graffiti on his back fence from a marketing/messaging perspective.
• Working late at an agency...and discovering another bunch of reasons to hate your job.
• The view from your window, a regular reader generated feature of Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic.
• Can't afford expensive waders? Do it the Texan way.
• Survival of the spitefullest, from Drew at Married to The Sea. (Better known as the artist behind Toothpaste for Dinner.)
• Headed to Florida? Don't miss the Burt Reynolds & Friends Museum.
• Shipment of Fail! (Which I found through Carb Free Creativity, who left a comment at Yonder Ponder. Don't you love this scary and intricate web we weave?)

Yeah, I know. Technically, that was 11 other places. But I only used seven bullets. So shut up.

Seven Other Places

Here are seven other places on the Internet you could be right now.

1. Every Presidential campaign logo since 1960. (Page might take some time to load.)
2. It's an animated chimp movie, with jetpacks! (With Amtrak as a sponsor? Sure to suck.)
3. Huge in Brazil, ancient Canadian power trio Rush. Their fans down there even sing to the instrumentals.
4. Meatwater. (Thanks, Fish & Chimps.)
5. The Obama worship has officially gone too far.
6. Passionate-White-person-teaches-inner-city-youth-to-shine.
7. A cool design firm wants you to work for them. You'll have to move to Jordan.

Seven Other Places

Here are seven other places on the Internet you could be.

• Sometimes I think Drew at Married to the Sea does his comics on acid. Other times, weed. I think he did this one on weed. The acid ones aren't as funny.
• Is love blossoming between an AE and a creative? Or is someone about to be stalked?
• God has a special woman for you, and she's got big tits.
• Good intentions getting twisted into meaninglessness.
• From north of Bal'more comes something refreshing : an agency blog that doesn't suck.
• Those MLMers always get testy when you shut 'em down.
• A satirist rewrites Shakespeare in chav-speak, including "MacBeff" and "De Taming of de Bitch."

The Black Hole That is The Internet

• The supposedly "neutral" Swiss are going to kill us all.
• You're about to be Tay Roll'd
• So, you've got a portfolio? BFD, says James.
• Twitter with care, just in case you weren't connected enough.
• Scamp posts a Bud Commercial with comment. 160 show up to have their say.

It's Friday - It's Good

A photographer takes very nice panoramas that are used in many Wikipedia articles. I suggest you steal some.

If you must crucify yourself, please get a tetanus shot. (Sponsored by Coca-Cola!)

Some clever submissions to Scamp’s “Advertising Haiku” post.

Old driver safety films.

The client who knows it all.

Can the venture capital for social networking sites please dry up now?

Go Ahead, Waste Some More Time

J-Lo’s Bitch

Hire a copywriter. Do it for the children.

Top 12 unreadable minimalist watches

Ad blogger tries to quit blogging, readers won’t let her.

Toad deconstructs Stuff White People Like

The Spitzerface, a new emoticon from DC trendmachers Hey Be Us.

Did you hear the one about the Polish bank robbers?

And She Shall Dance and Sing Aloud

Two more old ad oddities sites I've stumbled upon.

One is called Modern Mechanix. It's like some guy has inherited his grandfather's old magazine collection and sits for many hours a day scanning articles and ads, then writing out all the copy in each ad under the image. One man's obsession is your entertainment.

Another is Devil Duck which appears to grab from other sites more often than not but sprinkles in some unique weirdness.

Link Laundry

Some T-shirt shout-outs for some stuff I've been wasting time on this week when I was supposed to be working.



James has been pondering Hell in the heat of a poop-filled Dallas backyard.





It's a small blog world. Jordan's uncrowned king of design bloggers is Ahmad Humeid. Visit his blog at 360East. Also visit his company, Syntax.





The Assimilated Negro is moving on up, having been published at HuffPo and the new EbonyJet.




A local radio guy, whose station IDs and creative productions are stellar, is on the ground floor of some new Web 2.0-ish endeavor, complete with "beta" underneath. Good place to find blog ideas.





Kym gave a full three-weeks notice and her boss still went all vindictive psycho on her.






Copyranter is under the impression that Campari is trying to use Salma Hayek's breasts to sell liquor. Always reading into things.

Friday F*ckin' Off

In the spirit of Bill's Weekly WTF and Mark's Link Haze, here's some weird stuff to wile away the hours in your cube while you wait for the whistle to blow, signaling the end of another work week - with you no better prepared for retirement.

Straight Cash Homey: The guy who brought us the fake Drew Bledsoe blog, TonyHomo, is now collecting pictures of people in jerseys. I don't know why. Vaguely funny, but how long can it last?


He's a mysterious and minor character on NBC's The Office, but he writes a pretty funny blog. Check out Creed Thoughts and gaze with wonder at the amount of comments on each post. Network comedy writers have the sweetest jobs.


They've got scissors, scanners, and access to stacks and stacks of their grandparents' magazines. The people of LiveJournal's Vintage Ad Community are hard at work wasting my time.



Married to the Sea has apparently exhausted their supply of 19th Century illustrations and have a new look that is best described as 1970s Sunday School Clip Art. It's weird when a comic rebrands, but it's just as twisted-witty as before.