My Latest Tilted Windmill…BOGO

I’ve had it with BOGO. It means nothing. It is wasted space and must be expunged from the vernacular. I’ve begun my campaign with the Publix corporation because I spend many of my shopping hours in their stores. Here is the first salvo in what I am sure will be an up-hill battle against ridiculous double-speak like BOGO. I think you’ll get my reasoning from the correspondence I just submitted via the Publix web site’s feedback feature.

I recently noticed your web site began using the ridiculous, meaningless, marketing, double-speak “BOGO.” I cannot be the first person to notice that the marketing moron who invented this idiotic abbreviation had their head firmly implanted in their posterior. Use of this silly term, without any additional qualifier, adds absolutely nothing to your advertisements. “Buy One, Get One” is the foundation of capitalism and need not be repeated. It simply wastes advertising space. When I buy one of anything, I expect to get one of the item purchased.

This nonsensical acronym simply restates the obvious. If the intent of “BOGO” is to imply “Buy One, Get One Free” it must be qualified with the word “free” at some point in the advertisement. Otherwise, it is misleading. It isn’t beyond belief that “BOGO” might be featured prominently, while the qualifier “10% off,” appears in smaller type later in the advertisement. One might even qualify “BOGO” with “next Tuesday at the same price.” I am not implying that your advertisements are misleading in this way. These are just examples of how the unqualified use of “BOGO” might be used unscrupulously. As you see, by itself “BOGO” means nothing in the context of saving money or a temporary reduction in price.

I love my local Publix and rarely shop for groceries anywhere else. However, your adoption of this feckless phrase has me wondering if your corporate marketing personnel are in need of that medical procedure so often needed by marketing people, the cranial-rectal extraction.

If you are advertising a half-price, 50% off, or “Buy One Get One Free” sale, why not use any of those tried and true phrases that have served us so faithfully for decades? The use of “BOGO” is simply a silly trend that we must not allow to fester into something larger. Logical, right-thinking people everywhere must band together to stop the spread of “BOGO.” Please discontinue its use. Return to using words that actually mean something and don’t restate the obvious, assumed principle of capitalism that when I buy something, it get something.

Thank you for your consideration,
Mr. R. Barefoot
Madison, AL

So that’s it. I welcome your efforts in combating the spread of stupidity like “BOGO.” Next time, we put the knife to the neck of car dealerships trying to ram “Pre-owned” down our throats. None shall pass!

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In something totally unrelated, here is my most recent attempt at being an ass-hat on Youtube. It is a foil-hat-induced reasoning of the cause of the recent D.C. earthquake à la Pat Robertson’s rant about the Haitian earthquake last year.

The happy, but sad thing about this video is the first comment left by some hapless soul trying to persuade me that the Air Force is using “lazers [sic]” to control the weather or something like that. I’m not really sure what he was getting on about.


Link to the video at YouTube.

~ Keep chasing the odd, little happy.

vLog-Well This is new

Man, I’m lazy. Even typing is becoming a chore. So I stepped into the world of video. Did I say, “I’m lazy?” Making a video is more work than typing the article, but I’m going to give it the old college try. Besides, I don’t have to worry about a spell checker.

I think I’ve figured out the sound level well enough to where you can hear me without having your ears blown off.

If you’re interested in seeing any of theBarefoot on video, come check out my Facebook (link in the left sidebar). I’m using FB as a test bed. If I can get this video thing right, I’ll migrate to YouTube. One place you won’t see these is on Associated Content. I don’t trust their video set-up. It’s choppy and won’t play half the time. If you’re a fan from AC, I’m sorry. You’ll have to come see me on Facebook or wait for the big YouTube breakout.

What’s in these videos? Nothing spectacular. I don’t have anything but a webcam and a Kodak camera that holds only 40 seconds of video. I can’t do any “walking-around” stuff, cool transitions or even add sound tracks. It’s just me doing what I would do in an article. But this allows me to be a bit more informal and spout off about things that wouldn’t necessarily fill a couple of pages of written text. They’re short. They’re sweet. They’re fun for the whole family.

Hopefully, I’ll get better with the technical stuff as I gain some experience with the equipment. See y’all in the moving pictures!

The Nuclear Option Was Never an Option

Radio-right went nuclear this week talking about President Obama’s revamp of the U.S. nuclear retaliation policy. Their biggest beef is that the policy used to be vague. Supposedly, that gave every other nation and/or group on the planet pause to think about their actions. Yeah, huh…that gave them pause like the death penalty stops a murder. The death penalty has never stopped one murder from happening. In the heat of the moment, people don’t stop to think there might be consequences to their actions.

All Obama did was voice some common sense. No one, and I mean no one in their right mind, ever thought that a nuclear strike was the correct response to half the half-ass shit other nations and groups have pulled or ever will pull. All Obama did was say what a reasonable man is thinking. You don’t nuke somebody over some boarder dispute or shoe bomb or even destroying the World Trade Center. You just don’t and we (the U.S.) won’t.

Why? Because it’s a fucking thermo-nuclear bomb, you dumb shit. Have you ever seen what one of those things can really do? I’m not talking about the two that we actually used in WWII either. I’m talking about the modern ICBM. These are 20 to 40 kiloton, multiple, independently targeted warheads. They peel the paint of your walls, cook your insides toasty, then come back for the rest of the house and turn your Sarah-Palin-slogan-chanting ass into a shadow on the sidewalk. If you think those 1950′s Duck-and-Cover films are going to save you, you’re the dumbest stain on the concrete. These are fucking thermo-nuclear bombs!

I’m not sure I’ve made myself clear. A nuclear bomb completely destroys everything within 5 miles of ground-zero. Completely as in, it ain’t there no more. It’s like it was never there. Then everything else from 5 to 20 miles away from the detonation is cooked, twisted, burned, fried, molested, peeled, and generally fucked up. For everyone who gets to survive the blast, they enjoy the next couple of weeks slowly cooking to death. And you can’t go back to the area for 60 to 100 years.

Comparing thermo-nuclear war to two schoolyard bullies is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. Everyone who clapped when Sarah Palin said, “it’s like a child in a playground who says, ‘Punch me in the face, I’m not going to retaliate’,” you need a good dose of radioactive reality. The U.S. is not now and never was going to lob a nuclear bomb at anyone short of them lobbing one at us. Saying it doesn’t make us weak. It doesn’t change the global game of Who’s the Biggest Asshat? It only says, we’re reasonable, practical people.

Besides, we have some really terrifying, non-nuclear shit at our disposal. We also have the best trained military on the planet. We may not nuke your slimy ass, but we’ll sure as hell show up next week with a shipload of nasty-ass bombs and a bunch of kids who want your guts for garters. Your life will never be the same, no matter how short it is.

For anyone who even thought we would ever use a nuclear weapon in retaliation for anything short of one used on us, go and stick your head in a history book. Go watch a few minutes on YouTube to see what a real nuclear bomb does. Get your head out of Sarah Palin’s ass and think. If you still think using a nuclear weapon for anything short of Armageddon is okay, then I really, really really don’t want to know you.

All I can say is, “These are fucking thermo-nuclear bombs, you dumb shit.” If using one doesn’t scare the living shit out of you, you need your head examined with a power drill. I for one like the fact that the guy with the button has enough sense to realize that it isn’t a computer game where little lights give you the high score. I’m glad Obama realizes that these are fucking thermo-nuclear bombs that will kill you, kill your town, kill your city, kill every living thing.

_{And, no, I didn’t vote for Obama. And, no, I wouldn’t vote for Obama, but I wouldn’t vote for Sarah Palin either.}

Constance McMillen, a Fake Prom, and ZOMG! Fulton, Mississippi Fell into a Time Warp

What happens to a community torn asunder by a 17 year old lesbian? The Mayan calendar may be right. We’re all doomed and Fulton, MS is ground zero.

This all starts with Constance McMillen, an openly gay high school student, who just wanted to go to the prom. It seems simple enough until you realize Constance lives in Fulton, Mississippi and Fulton fell through a rip in the fabric of space-time, and landed in the year 1947.

Read the Rest. It’s the Best…

Naked Eye Astronomy: Birthday Edition

I know I promised that the next installment of Naked Eye Astronomy would be about unicorns, but y’all have indulged me so far. Please grant me this one birthday gift. Let me talk about the zodiac today. The zodiac is simply the twelve constellations through which the sun appears to move during the tropical year. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m going to try not to sound rantish, but you see where this is going.

I sometimes write about astronomy. The stars, planets, comets, asteroids, planetoids, and all things astronomical have fascinated me since I was a child. I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon when I was 6 and the memory is as clear today as it was in 1969. I turned my childhood enthrallment into a hobby, amateur astronomy. I don’t want to put down anyone’s hobby, but astronomy is not astrology. Astronomy is a scientific approach to studying the heavens. Astrology is at best a funny, back page newspaper filler. At worst, astrology is a giant waste of time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I probably insulted some true believer out there. Someone will probably want to argue/debate the merits of astrology with me. Let me save you the trouble…don’t bother. It’s a crock. A big steaming crock of crap. I wrote an article about that topic a long time ago and I’m kicking myself for not leaning on one point more heavily. I touched on it under the heading “Stuck in the past” in the article, Debunking Astrology: Myth in the Modern Era. What is the one, biggest, glaring, conspicuous reason astrology is so very, very bogus? axial precession.

It hit me again today like the blazing sun in my astronomy software, Stellarium. I’m a Sagittarius who was born a Capricorn. Four thousand years of axial precession have bumped all the astrological signs back one month. The sun won’t even enter Capricornus until the 18th of January 2009. As it is today, as it was on my birthday, the sun is squarely in Sagittarius.

Those moldy Babylonians did a great job mapping out the sky and spinning some fanciful tales, but they didn’t factor in axial precession. No one since has bothered to adjust the astrological houses. No one bothers to point to all the fancy birth charts and say, “Um…no. The sun is in the wrong house for me to be a Capricorn.”

I’m sorry if that offends someone, but axial precession is a fact. I don’t care if you believe in God or gods or fate or karma. I don’t care if you think the flying spaghetti monster in the sky directs your daily footsteps. What snaps my garters is when people take something simple like gravity, twist it into some all-encompassing system, and try to relieve their minds of personal responsibility.

Just so we’re clear: 4,000 years ago astronomy helped plant crops. Then some joker got the idea that crop fertility equals human fertility and tried to apply that fancy new calendar to babies. Astronomy is not astrology. Stars are giant fusion reactors and do not control our fates. Planets follow Newtonian laws and not the laws of Marduk.

I was conceived under a “Do Not Disturb” sign and born under a stop sign. So happy birthday to me. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Consider that your annual sacrifice…er…present.

Change for America: A Few Things I’d like to See Barack Obama Change

Ah! Morning in America. Why do I feel like I need coffee and lots of it for the next 4 years? The American voter has spoken. “We want change!” is the cry. OK, change this. Make the Federal government more efficient. Cut the fat and excise the bloat.

There is a great piece of artwork called Death & Taxes. It’s a real eye-opener possibly better than your triple-shot, extra-foam, cappuccino. After taking a look, I decided there are a few things that need changing.

Do get health insurance and the tobacco corporations out of each others pockets. Why don’t health insurance companies pay for smoking cessation drugs/programs. I’ve never been able to figure this one out. Smoking costs health insurance companies millions of dollars every year, but they won’t pay for preventative medicine. What kind of pictures are in the vault at Altria headquarters? Some really raunchy stuff from the Humana Xmas party, I assume.

Do away with the Department of Education. Cut my taxes that go to support the DoEd so I can happily pay them to my local schools. No child left behind. Are you kidding me? Washington mandates this junk and doesn’t send near enough money to pay for it. Let the locals handle their own. Besides, I know a kid or two that needs to be left behind or at least dropped off at the vo-tech.

Read the rest. It’s the best. »

Just a few thoughts on change.

Typing is Easier Without an IV Needle in Your Arm

I’m stuck in this blasted hospital for at least one more day while they double check enzyme levels. At least they have some Wi-Fi and my daughter was kind enough to drop off my laptop.

I was really sick of that stupid IV. Waltzing Matilda to the bathroom. Waltzing Matilda to the window. Waltzing Matilda to bed. Argh! The stupid line gets caught on everything. The first thing I asked the doctor today was, “Write an order to have this thing removed!” He put me on solid food and out came the IV.

Now when you haven’t eaten for 3 days, any food will do, even hospital food. But I think the doc lost his mind here. I should have gotten some tea and jello to start, not that chicken-like slab, mashed potatoes, and green beans. And where do they get off giving “bread pudding” with raisins to someone who might be diabetic? Dumbasses.

I first ask the doctor if I could just go home today. He said he really wanted to see how I did on real food first. Then he had the nerve to say, “Do you not have insurance?” WTF? Admitting screwed up, has me down for “no insurance” and this guy wants to keep me one more day? You’d think they’d be rolling me out in a wheel chair at midnight with my hand propped up in the “hail a cap” motion.

Did I mention I hate hospitals? You know I almost died to put myself in here. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Never again. Force of will…what ever it takes. Never again will I be such a dumbass. Hey, we all get one, may two if we’re lucky. I will miss the Demerol though.

What’s up with your blog, Barefoot?

I’ve been asked this multiple times during the last few days. The color has changed and the Associated Content pages are gone. It’s pretty simple. It’s a protest. Not that I think I have some influential blog, but I have to walk the talk.

If you saw my post on 30 Aug 2008, you know I’m none too happy with how AC handled their new forum rollout or the forum design itself. I pulled my AC pages including the many tips, I’ve blogged over the last many months. I took the AC orange off as further disassociation. The phrase of the week is “guilt by association.” I ain’t havin’ none. To all who accused me of being an AC cheerleader in the past, this is the real me. True to myself.

To their credit, AC made apologies to their writers/community. They asked how they can make it better. They incorporated a few minor, easily executed changes. I know a re-vamp of the overall navigation design will take some time, but therein lies my trepidation. I’ve seen this before at AC. I’ve seen AC offer many words and platitudes without any follow-through. I’m still in “believe it when I see it” mode.

There are a few bright spots. The staff is a bit more engaged. I say “a bit” because it is no where near the involvement needed to moderate such a forum. The mind-boggling thing is that with all the new sub-forums, all with their ridiculously minute themes, the AC staff itself is dumping most of their posts in the General Forum when the thread topic clearly matches one of the subs. The only reason I can think of is AC knows that everyone goes to the General Forum and no one will see their announcements if they really posted them in the Announcements Forum.

Then there are still the silly AC Connect forums. Previously, we all got along well with one Non-AC Forum and one Just For Fun Forum for a catch-all. Now there are things like Health and Wellness and Pet Lovers. I predicted they would become dump-and-runs for article links of shameless self-promotion and it has already started. The amusing thing about this is one newbie-spammer already figured out that no one was reading the sub-sub-sub forum and reposted his self-promotion in the old Just For Fun forum.

The newly participating AC staffers are trying to post their own starter threads to guide these buried forums, but fighting foo is hard. The aging “last post” timestamps on those forums are telling. Some only have one thread, the sarcastic protest thread I posted on day one, in them. Unfortunately, those forums are there to stay, no matter how or how often they are used.

I’m still hoping they will take all of our feedback and make the navigation easier. The suggestions from the community are almost identical so AC has a template. The only positive feedback I’ve seen was from a couple of people who keep to very few threads. At least AC made following only one or two threads easy. Yea…no wait…that leads to isolationism. People end up only following threads they start or a couple started by their friends. They never get the big picture and miss so much freely-offered information.

In short, hope is still only hope. AC staff participation is still low (I only saw one complaint addressed today, but several new announcements.). Navigation remains impossible. Communication from the staff about the progress is still the sound of one hand clapping. One the upside, I’ve had time to explore some other forums and sites that I’ve been meaning to parse. Let AC deal with the disinformation trolls. They’ve already started coming out of the cracks.

Stupidity at Associated Content

Associated Content made great strides in the two years I’ve been with them. They’ve also made several boneheaded errors. Until now the only one that really got me riled was the damned interlinker. Their latest change has just stolen my joy.

The AC forum was my favorite hang out. Then some genius decided to fix what wasn’t broken. I don’t know who came up with the new design, who sold it to AC, or how they thought it was an improvement, but it’s a complete and total cluster fuck. I don’t say this because I’m resistant to change. This is the opinion of a professional web application developer. Let me break it down:

Usability 1/5
The only reason AC gets 1 out of 5 is because a zero means the site is down. Just being up gives anyone a default 1. The new AC forum is a bunch of folders within folders with no way to navigate between the 4 master forums. There is no tree navigation and at certain points even the header hierarchy links are missing parts of the path. I’ve taken to opening the master forum (well 3 of them at least because “AC Connect” is a useless waste of disc space) in tabs and refreshing from time to time. That’s too much damned work AC! Their solution? A subscription feature that will email me when something changes. Bugger off! I don’t want to wait for email, jump over to my email client, and open the mail to find out someone posted something new. I’m in the forum and I want to see what’s going on while I’m there. Besides, the email that I get is useless. It says “Click here to see,” but there isn’t a hyperlink. It might as well say, “Something is new. Now go try to find out what it is shmuck! AhHaHaHaHa!” I have enough useless shit about cheap Viagra in my inbox. I don’t what more email.

Intuitiveness 0/5
Web applications should be intuitive. A forum user should be able to glance at a forum list and easily find what they need. AC’s new design requires the user to have prior knowledge of the layout (folders within folders) to find what they want. Unless you think exactly like the dumbass who came up with the system, you’ll never find the right thread. The thing makes less sense than the Dewey Decimal system.

Features 0/5
AC included none of the features common to most forums. They have completely ignored the first rule of web design: “People learn how to use the web by surfing other web sites, not yours.” In other words, do things like everyone else so the user knows what to expect. AC has no “what has been posted since my last visit/refresh” feature like every other web site on earth. They don’t have “at a glace what’s new” visual indicators. For this you have to remember the timestamp of the last post from your last visit and do the math in your head.

Community 0/5
Forums, above all, are communities of like-minded users. AC has turned their forum into pigeon holes for simple-minded users. Why the hell do I want to go to the forum of a writer’s web site to discuss my aches and pains? But AC has gracious buried a “Health & Wellness” forum deep in the bowels of the new design. If I want medical advice, I’ll go to WebMD. If I want to talk about writing, I’ll go to AC. Keep it simple AC. This design does not foster the community. It segregates. The design encourages people to stay in one folder. You can’t be all things to all people.

User involvement 0/5
AC steam rolled this new design out without so much as a by-your-leave. The frequent forum folk have been giving AC suggestions for improvement for years. None of of these suggestions were included in the new design. Here they have a steady stream of input from the people using the software and they totally ignore everything, subcontract the design to some DeVry Institute dropout, and force it down the community’s throat. Not even a beta test was done.

Hope for change 0/5
After the rollout, AC asked the users, “TaDa! What do you think?” The overwhelming feedback has been “This sucks. It’s hard to navigate. I can’t find anything. It’s all confusing.” There have been dozens of suggestions made on how to rectify the situation. How high are my hopes that AC will listen? Not high. Given that they didn’t listen to us prior to the change and given that the only response to the current cries was “Give it time. You’ll get used to it.” tells me AC has no real intentions of correcting anything. They obviously spent a lot of time and money on this. There is obviously someone’s job at stake here. Whoever that is has to defend the blasted thing to the bitter end. Yeah, I’m eyeballing you, Darnell. I doubt AC would change at this point if Obama dropped by their Denver headquarters and gave a speech about the importance of change.

Maintainability 0/5
AC has always been a self-moderated forum. Their new design requires way too much overhead. They are going to need several moderators to keep the place clean and the newbies happy. Forum participation by AC employees has never been something they were very willing to do. Without it, the new forum will quickly implode. The experienced AC users who used to answer the bulk of questions are not willing to take the enormous amount of time to do so. My prediction is hundreds of unanswered newbie threads and ensuing user disgust with AC. People will leave in droves.

Overall Score: Cluster Fuck
AC has taken what was a cozy Rick’s Cafe and turned it into TGI Friday’s, only they forgot to install a kitchen or restrooms. So now that I ranted, what could they do to make it better? Simply put it back the way it was and listen to their community. I suspect this design is supposed to align with some bigger marketing plan, but not all parts of a company or site need to fulfill some larger goal. A forum is just a forum. Keep it simple. Keep it clean. There are dozens of constructive suggestions at AC’s disposal. The only problem is these suggestion were left in the AC forum and are next to impossible to find. Even the AC employees haven’t seen half of them and if they have, they’re being damned quiet about it.

Nancy Pelosi’s Innovative Solution to Save Energy

On Friday, August 1, 2008, the GOP House minority was calling for a vote to allow new off-shore drilling or at least a debate on the question. Pelosi instead called for an adjournment vote. The vote was 213-212 to adjourn for a 5-week vacation. The CSPAN cameras were turned off, the lights in the House were extinguished, and the GOP staged a sit-in. When Capital police tried to clear the press gallery, GOP Representatives intervened.

Pelosi’s act sets an example for the rest of the nation. We must save energy since we’re not going to look for new sources of oil. What lessons do we learn from Pelosi’s example?

If you don’t like the conversation, just leave.
Don’t like the topic? Think you might lose the argument? Already have your …

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